


In Care Of

by quietasasleepingarmy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codes & Ciphers, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, First Time, Jealous John, Love Confessions, Love Letters, M/M, POV Second Person, Parenthood, Possessive John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 01:07:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7554301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietasasleepingarmy/pseuds/quietasasleepingarmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John writes instructions for Sherlock's lover on how to care for him. Repost of an older fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of a fic that was originally posted in April of 2014.
> 
> When I deleted my ao3 account, I was in a dark, panicked place. I felt like a hack, and like my only option was to cast off what I'd done before and start anew. I expected to naturally distance myself from this show and these characters; to begin new projects and pursue new challenges. But if anything, months later, I'm more enraptured by BBC Sherlock and its fandom than ever. I still want to read and write and talk about John and Sherlock more than I want to do almost anything else.
> 
> For weeks I tried to think of a new username, but I kept coming back to how much I want to keep this one. So I am back. I can't describe how astonished I've been to receive kind messages asking me to repost this story, so please, by all means, here it is. I'm sorry that I deleted it.  
>    
>  **To disclaim:**
> 
> There has been some discussion of my treatment of Mary in this story, so I'd like to say that while I consider my version of her here to be an antagonist, she is (hopefully) a three-dimensional antagonist, and is not treated as purely evil by other characters. This is NOT a Johnlockary story, as some readers have claimed.
> 
> Thank you so much to those who wondered where I went. It means more than I can say. At the risk of getting too personal, I wrote this story during a first attempt at sobriety at which I did not succeed, and am reposting it during a much healthier, hopefully permanent attempt. I wouldn't be where I am without fandom. Thank you for your time and energy and enthusiasm--you all keep me right.
> 
>    
> I am amazed to announce that this fic has now been translated into Russian! Read it [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/3331344).

 

 

It begins with a simple refusal of food and sleep. Mrs. Hudson starts to call you in the evening, always worried that she’s disturbing you.

“It’s just that he hasn’t touched anything in. . .I don’t know how many days. That's hardly new for him, I know, but this feels different. I just thought maybe you could come by some time tomorrow. He always perks up a bit when you’re around.”

Then there are the endless, maudlin violin sessions. Mozart’s Requiem in D minor has begun to lose its already circumstantial appeal, to say nothing of the songs that truly worry you—the ones that you don’t recognize.

There is a general unwillingness to respond directly to queries, or anything at all.

“Sherlock,” you say. “Mary will be wondering where I am. I can’t wait all afternoon for you to tell me what’s wrong.”

You don’t mean to be impatient. There just isn’t time anymore for you to sit around for hours with a newspaper, waiting for his mood to settle and evolve into a state of bright eyed chattiness. You can barely steal away these brief interludes—a lunch hour here and there, just to make sure that he’s alive, uninjured, and engaged with enough work to keep him from smoking or worse.

  
He snorts softly but doesn’t look up. The bow never leaves the violin. It’s a dark melody that you don’t recognize, which makes you fear the worst. He’s been composing.

“I have to be back at the clinic soon. Please, please tell me what’s bothering you.”

He responds with a plaintive decrescendo. His fingers tremble on the finishing notes.

“I’m begging you.”

This earns you a few seconds of narrowed eye contact. He abruptly switches focus from you to the fresh set of bullet holes that he’s inflicted upon the wall.

“You’re being childish.”

Dark silence.

“I thought that maybe, after, you know, you came back to life. . .that we’d have fewer of these. . .episodes.”

He lowers the violin. The crease between his eyes deepens. His mouth opens slightly, then closes it again.

“Okay, okay,” you say. “I’m sorry.” You begin to pace, grabbing absently at the nape of your neck. “But this is ridiculous, Sherlock. It really is. I’m here. I’m available. And as a concerned party with a bit of medical expertise, I really think it’s in your best interest to discuss. . .whatever this is.”

He studies the floor by your feet.

You exhale heavily, give him your most wounded look, and wander into the kitchen. Maybe he’ll take a cup of tea with extra sugar, if food’s not in the cards. You’re that desperate to introduce calories into his system.

Lab equipment crowds the table in even greater concentration than when you lived here. It looks as though it hasn’t been touched in several days. Dust has settled on a large beaker, in which something vaguely bloodlike in consistency and color has congealed. Several smells compete for your attention. You take the tea from its place on the shelf by the door, and note the cobwebs that cling to your fingers.

He skulks by the window, picking out what sounds like a funeral dirge on the violin’s strings. He avoids your eyes, but accepts the tea.

You clear your throat. “Is it. . .” Not sure how to proceed. You decide to risk discomfort in the interest of answers. “Irene Adler? This is around the time of year that she, uh, left, isn’t it?”

  
Alarm flickers briefly across his face. He abandons the tea, steps forward a few paces, and collapses onto the couch. He presses the backs of his fingers to his forehead. If this didn’t feel so serious, you could almost swear that he was trying to make you laugh.

“So. . .not Irene Adler.”

He sighs noisily.

“An unsolved case? You know you can’t beat yourself up for those—as much as you’d like to forget it, you are still human.”

He turns inward. You glare at the galaxy of dark curls that is now all you can see of his head.  
“I didn’t want to have to say this, but if you don’t start eating or responding to me or Mrs. Hudson. . .”

He tenses visibly.

“. . .I’m going to have to get Mycroft involved.”

“For GOD’S SAKE, John.” He sounds as if he hasn’t talked in a week, which, you think, he probably hasn’t. His voice is as raw as if he’d been crying. Has he been? Even after the uncharacteristic tenderness he displayed at your wedding, you can’t imagine it.

He pushes into a sitting position and threads his fingers through his hair. You move to sit across him in the chair that he’s brought back from wherever he was hiding it.

“Honestly, John,” he croaks. “If you can’t pick up on the very obvious symptoms of this particular—awful, violent—cascade of neurochemistry, then I fear for your reputation as a medical professional.”

Now you’re getting somewhere. He only lashes out at you when he’s embarrassed or afraid.

  
“I’m sorry, the—symptoms?” You cock your head and take in the peek of his eyes through fingers and curls. “You’re quite right, Sherlock—this is beyond my diagnostic ability. You are the chemistry expert, after all. To which, um—cascade are you referring?”

He emits a pained noise that resembles a sob.  
“Love.”

You choke on air. “Um—sorry?”

“I’m in love, you utter idiot. Tedious, horrible, boring, illogical love.”

You do a perfect impression of him on the day you asked him to be your best man. He stares back at you, just as you did then. You wonder if you look as terrified as he did.

You have to say something. Whole minutes have passed. “Oh, uh. Oh. I see.”

He slumps back into a faceless pile of couch-bound limbs. “Satisfied, Dr. Watson?” His voice is muffled by the pillow into which he’s buried his face. “Don’t you have other patients to interrogate?”

Not for the first time since he came back to life, you leave Baker Street feeling like you’ve failed him.

 

  
“What’s the matter with you?” Mary looms above you, all eyebrows and teeth. “You haven’t spoken since dinner.”

Ice clinks against the glass in your hand. You raise your eyebrows at her.

“You went to see him, I take it. I was wondering why you were late from lunch. Didn’t get the chance to ask.”

She has the courtesy to look concerned. Maybe she is. You’d like to assume that she conducts herself with sincerity most of the time. You’d like to assume that of anyone. And she does seem to genuinely like Sherlock, bless her. “How’s he holding up without you?”

You gesture vaguely with one hand. “Oh, you know. Fine. He’s totally focused on a new case. Didn’t have much time for me, actually. Kind of a relief to see him so distracted.”

She squints. “Don’t lie to me.”

Are you really so terrible at it? Or do you merely surround yourself with those who have the power to both see and observe?

“Ah, yeah, well. He’s in a bad way, to be honest.” You look up at her. Her hand and forearm rest on the chair back behind you. “He said. . .he said. . .it sounds ridiculous to even repeat it.”

“Go on.”

“He told me that he’s in love.”

Her eyes widen. She laughs, then clearly regrets it when your gaze turns steely. “Sorry. . .it’s just. . .this is Sherlock we’re talking about. You’ve told me enough that you don’t think he’s capable of that sort of thing. I don’t know about that, but he does seem—in a weird way—almost too young to be in love.” She smiles thoughtfully. “Which is absurd, of course—he’s what, thirty six?”

“I know what you mean.” You drain the glass of its contents.

 

  
Silence haunts the suburbs. What you wouldn’t give for an ambulance, a drive by, a drunken carousal. Anything to interrupt your project.

To get a better hold of this—what is this, a problem? If he’s in this many pieces, then yes, it is a problem, because you’re not there to supervise and worry and scour for hidden stashes—you decide to reflect on the last time you saw him this way. The era of The Woman. It’s not something you’re keen to revisit, but what needs must.

He wasn’t really much different until he thought she had died. After the drugging incident, he had hoarded the moaning texts like a child with a secret admirer—always exiting the room to read them, sometimes staying away for upwards of an hour. You peeked in on him once and found him utterly absorbed in the light of the screen, as though staring at the text hard enough would cause it to give up its code. You knew that he was lost. You aren’t stupid. You’d picked up on Mycroft’s occasional quips about his brother’s lack of sexual experience, and if you were being very honest and analytic with yourself, you could maybe suppose that Sherlock’s innate innocence is part of what has always attracted you to him. There is such purity to his enthusiasm. When the game is on, he is nine years old in a pirate’s tricorne, off to scale the ocean and the immeasurable unknown. Sex doesn’t come into it. Only that time, it did. Didn’t it?

  
You left him alone with her at Baker Street. She was starving for him. He proved it, later, when he revealed that he’d taken her pulse. When you tried to ask if he had done more than that, you were met with silence.

Sherlock Holmes always has to have the last word. Aren’t you the one who said that?

  
“I’m not gay,” you’d told her. The presumptuous, impossibly beautiful bitch.

“But I am. And look at us both.”

You knew what she’d meant. Had Sherlock, from his place in the shadows?

You may never know.

He doesn’t feel things that way.

Except that he apparently does.

Is it a woman? Irene Adler was a woman, certainly. But was she truly The Woman? As in, the only woman? You’ve wondered, more often than you’d care to admit, what he’d like, if he could. If he did. Who would be his type? Naked dominatrixes? Quiet, loyal lab rats? Consulting criminals?

Who could possibly trigger these—these “cascades” in Sherlock Holmes?

 

 

  
You have crossed into the realm of the incontrovertibly drunk. It’s getting late, but if you try to sleep now, you’ll wake up at 5 a.m. with a racing heart and an even guiltier conscience. You need to solve this. Solve what? This, this—declaration. There must be something in your own crumbling mind palace that can help you provide Sherlock with some kind of real advice. Mind shack, more like. You snort. There must be something. Surely you know him well enough. If not, what has this all been for?

You picture him on a rainy December afternoon, laying heavy vibrato on the final notes of an unknown lament. He raises the bow and starts to play it again.

“Sherlock, you have to eat something.”

No response. He plays on. He’s so much thinner than he was six months ago, when this all began. Shadowed cheeks and hollow eyes that won’t meet yours.

“Do you want to talk about her?”

Nothing but that same damning silence.

In lieu of answers, you turn your attention to his other physical aspects. Observe, John. Don’t just see. His bare calves, white as paper, sweep down into the well-turned curves of slender ankles. His feet are so highly arched that that they lift him slightly from the floor even as he stands evenly. You’ve never noticed his feet before. You wonder if he’s noticed yours. Of course he has. You wonder if they say anything of substance about you, because you certainly don’t know what to make of the surprising delicacy of his long, alabaster toes.

His dressing gown is a mourning shade of blue. Was that intentional? Where does he even get his clothes? So many things you’ve never known; so many mysteries leading up to the collection of facts that you’ve come to take for granted as him. Curls, cheekbones and a turned up collar. Perhaps you’ve never bothered to find out because it would somehow spoil some of the magic of him. Maybe you can tell yourself that instead of hating yourself for your lack of interest.

No, never lack of interest.

Lack of knowing where to look.

You find nothing in his dressing gown, so you travel upward to the soft lines of that absurdly long, elegant neck. The hollow of his throat is exactly the width of a mouth. Exactly where you’d kiss him. Er, where he should be kissed. By whoever is going to kiss him. Someone has to, someday, don’t they? If not, what a waste. Did you really just think that?

You move on to the strong edge of his jaw, up to those exquisite cheekbones (no use lying while you’re in your mind shack—they are fucking perfect). A little to the right, to that particular nose, so well positioned over his pale heart of a mouth. Up, now, a bit. The best for last. Eyes the color of mercury. One lost fleck of gold. Pupils. Dilated. Inside, the telltale gleam of newborn stars.

He is looking at you now. He has lowered the violin; it hangs loosely in his hand. You close the few steps between you. Place your hand against his face, cup that sculpted jaw. . .

You gasp. You come to. There is the clatter of glass against the table beside you.  
You rub your eyes viciously until fireworks bloom behind them. Your laptop is within reach. You grab it. Open browser. Go to blog. New post.

_If you’re reading this, then I assume that you’re the one. The one in a million ones. The lucky sod Sherlock’s decided to let into his world._

_He’s not like that, you know. He doesn’t feel things that way. Whoever you are, you should know how unique this is. How special you must be, to have reduced the consulting detective to the state I found him in today._

_The first thing you should know is that if you hurt him, I will kill you. I am a medical doctor and a veteran of war, with quite a lot of experience hunting down criminals. I will find you and I will gut you. I will score your skin and remove it while you are still alive. I will relieve you of your organs one by one and hold them up for you to see. I will relish your every scream. I, John Hamish Watson, make that vow to you here and now._

_If that hasn’t scared you off, then allow me to offer a few notes on how best to care for the tornado who’s chosen you for a lover. I recommend that you follow them to a T. I am something of an authority on the subject._

_If he says he isn’t hungry, don’t believe him. He won’t talk to you for whole days sometimes, so you have to watch him. Leave plates by his computer (or yours, whichever is closer). Keep sandwiches assembled in the fridge for easy access. Make sure to store them above any body parts._

_He likes tarts, pasta, and chips._

  
_2\. Black, two sugars._

  
_3\. Always tell him when he’s made an amazing deduction, even if he’s dismissive or if he makes fun of you for it. He needs it. If he lets you touch him—I guess that will be part of the deal, won’t it, if you two are together—maybe follow it up with a hug. Kiss him on the cheek and tell him he’s extraordinary._

  
_4\. Always act like his violin produces the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard. It probably won’t be an act. I can’t imagine that you’ve heard anything better._

  
_5\. Sometimes he falls asleep sitting up. Help him to bed. Take off his shoes for him. Tuck him in. He’s very agreeable when he’s half asleep. He’ll let you unbutton his shirt and check him for fever._

  
_6\. Kiss him whenever you can. (You lucky bastard.)_

  
_7\. He’s a little bit weird about sex, so take it slow with him. I don’t know if he’s ever been with anyone before. I’m not sure he knows what to expect. He may have read about it in a textbook. I think he’s watched some porn on my computer. He might act like he knows what he’s doing, but you’ll need to show him. Gently. Never make him feel stupid or inadequate. (See the disclaimer above about me finding and gutting you. That applies here, too.) Don’t fuck him. Make love to him. Slowly. Soundly. Make him see what he’s been missing._

  
_8\. Make sure that he sleeps at least ten hours every three days. Try for more, of course. Try as hard for him as you are able. Try harder than that._

  
_9\. Don’t give him any cigarettes, no matter how hard he begs._

  
_10\. Take every opportunity to disrespect his brother in front of him. He loves it._

  
You blink a few times. Something has obscured your vision. Something wet.

  
_If you fail to comply with any of the above guidelines, then fine, okay. I understand. He’s yours now. You may conduct your affairs however you wish. I’m just a bystander. But I swear that if I find out about it, I will find you. I’ll end you._

  
Save Draft.

You expel a guttural breath. Gray dawn light renders every shade in the room monochromatic. This is Kansas, 1939. You wish a tornado would whip you up and set you down somewhere a little more urban.

Instead it’s just Mary who walks through the bedroom door, looking like the aftermath of some other extreme weather event.

“Jesus, John,” she groans, “you’re still out here? What am I going to tell people when they ask why their GP is falling asleep and smells like last night’s whiskey?”

“I expect they’ll make their own deductions,” you cough, more to yourself than to her. She glowers at you perfectly. She could win awards with that fucking scowl. She could hold workshops for disappointed wives. “I’ll shower, I’ll shower. Just. . .make some coffee.”  
“Oh, shall I? I’ll look forward to that.” She disappears into the kitchen. You hear cabinet doors slamming. The noise tightens the twinge behind your eyes.

 

  
You decide that you’ll take the evening off from her. She’s beyond pissed at you anyway. What’s one more offense? Maybe you did fall asleep a bit in between your two and three o’clock appointments. Maybe you did neglect to buzz the intercom for a few moments longer than necessary while you Googled historical trends of tornados in England. Maybe you could have been kinder to Mrs. Hutchison about her rash. It’s her third one this summer. She refuses to wear gloves in the garden. The headache that has been building since you closed your laptop has attained record-breaking pressure.

You mean to go to a pub. That’s what blokes do when they’re worn down by wives and the obligations of home, right? They go for a pint with some mates. Only you haven’t spoken to anyone you’d call a “mate” since your wedding, and even if you had, you’ve never been one for loud, alcohol-fueled gatherings. You prefer the intimacy of one on one contact. So it’s really not much of a surprise when you find yourself tripping toward Baker Street. The colors and sounds that surround you even before you get to 221B collect into a cool, soothing balm that makes quick work of your headache.

As you let yourself in through the blessedly familiar door, you’re greeted with the last thing you expected: no one is home. You can’t remember the last time that happened. It makes you worry, for a second, that they’ve been abducted, but there are no signs of forced entry. Good, you think. Sherlock’s out in the world somewhere. He needs that—fresh air and the possibility of sunlight on his skin. Maybe he’s on a case. Maybe he finally broke down and ventured into a supermarket. Maybe—you swallow involuntarily—he’s caught between the creamy thighs of a nubile mystery person, his curls matted to his forehead and his face contorted into unspeakable expressions of ecstasy. Maybe he’s saying their name against their skin in that rare, expensive voice. Maybe he’s lit up by the afterglow, smoking a cigarette, gracing them with that most elusive of his gifts: a single, jewel-bright smile.

You stagger up the well-worn steps, which you think could navigate blind-folded with a bad case of vertigo, if you had to. That’s sort of how you feel, now, anyway.

You push open the door. The sitting room is less stuffy than it was yesterday. A breeze from an open window meanders through and touches the sweat on your face. See. Observe. Items have been swept into slightly neater piles. The fireplace and bookshelves are missing their customary patina of dust. You tip-toe into the kitchen, suddenly aware that for the first time in your history at 221B Baker Street, you feel like an intruder. The lab equipment has disappeared from the table, which has been scrubbed so thoroughly that the wood shines. You peek into the fridge. Clean, bright, and stocked with items that resemble a normal grocery haul. No stray human extremities. A gallon of milk that doesn’t make you ill with its mere expiration date. You close the door and try the tea shelf. Cobwebs gone. New tin of coffee. Your favorite kind. His, too, you remind yourself. Black. Two sugars.

You wonder if you dare approach the threshold of his bedroom. It feels like the ultimate transgression, one that you would never have indulged in when you lived here, except for when looking for drugs. You decide that that’s what you’re going to do now. He was so distraught yesterday. You know the signs. If it was okay to look through his sock index after Irene Adler’s “death,” then why not now? You’re a concerned citizen. A friend.

You press your palm against the door. His best friend.

Everything looks about the same as the last time you were here. Green walls, periodic table, sketch of an insect whose scientific name you can never remember—all intact as if he’d never left. There’s a different chair next to the wardrobe, now. Fancy. You can’t even begin to imagine where he got such a thing, or why. You suppress the rising, wretched, black feeling that you’ve never known him at all.

You approach the sock index. Neatly paired skeins of cloth peer up at you in harmless shades of navy, black and plum. You rifle through them delicately, noting the lushness of the fabric. Cashmere, all of them. The posh twat. You laugh under your breath, unable to shake the idea that any kind of noise will break the spell and prompt the floor to swallow you whole.  
The bed has been made neatly, but in a hurry. It looks indecently soft. Before you can stop yourself, you press your nose to the pillow on the left, next to the one that you know is his. To your crushing relief, it smells blank: just the neutral, unthreatening scent of clean cotton. You slowly move to the other pillow. Tobacco and peppermint. So he has been smoking. You breathe in again, more deeply, to find the headier, musky smell that belongs to him alone. There it is. Soft and woodsy. Warm. Mysterious. Have your eyelids always weighed this much? This smell goes so much better with darkness. In your last conscious seconds, you slip into your mind shack to make a final attempt at observing something useful.

. . .you’re dancing with him. Rather, he is gliding across the room with your forearms in his hands, and you are doing everything you can to avoid stepping on his feet.

  
“You are supposed to be leading, John,” he says with only a hint of annoyance. “I really don’t think that Mary should have to do all the work, do you?”

You call upon every study technique you ever used at med school to try and remember the count and sweep of the steps. You think you’ve got it; you step forward, only to crash directly into him, bringing you chest to chest.

“No, no, no,” he laughs, setting off the map of lines around his eyes. There are more there than before he died. He gently moves your right hand to his waist and clasps your left in his. He is warm, warm, almost too warm. You wish he was asleep so that you could check him for fever. “You know this, Dr. Watson,” he purrs. “Come on. Be the graceful groom she deserves.”

  
You take a step back, then sweep carefully to the left. He follows, a smile playing at his pale lips. His eyes are lit up like candles. He believes in you so much. You can’t disappoint him. You push through the rest of the steps without mishap. When the song ends, you are reluctant to let go. With your hands against him, there can be no question that he is, in fact, alive. The facts of him are all here, present and accounted for, warm in your grasp. Because this is your mind shack, you don’t let go. You press him closer to you. He reciprocates without hesitation. His hands move to the back of your head and a place between your shoulders. You realize that you’ve only hugged him one other time.

What a waste.

 

  
When you wake up, it’s completely dark. The scent around your head has changed—you’re now surrounded by that untouched, clean cotton smell. You are dimly aware that you are under the duvet, instead of over it, and that you are no longer wearing shoes. A sound breaks the sacred silence of the room. You stiffen as consciousness closes in around you. It was definitely, in your medical opinion, the sound of an exhale. It’s followed by the unmistakable hush of an inhale, and then repeated. You use minute movements to assess the situation. Move your hand down inch by inch until it meets the fingers that are softly splayed over your stomach. Turn your head infinitesimally to the left. There he is. His face glows in the dim light that shines in from the street. His chest rises and falls in time with those precious sounds, which prove, like the warmth and weight of him beside you, that he is alive. Something clenches in your gut. By what right do his eyebrows rest in just that shape above ink-dark lashes? He’s more beautiful than anyone you’ve ever seen, and you hate it. Without thought, you check his vital signs. A strong pulse, if a little quick. You press the back of your hand to his lips, to measure the frequency of his breath, and then to his forehead. No sign of a fever. You employ every stealth tactic you ever learned in the army to rise from the bed and close the door without waking him.


	2. Chapter 2

 

On the tube home, you revisit the moment it became clear to you that he wasn't actually dead. The details jut into the spare rooms of your mind shack as vividly as if they had been etched there tonight. The sheer lunacy of his face, all marked up with a Sharpie. The waves of uncertainty and regret marring the waters of his eyes. The height and length and heat of him.

"Interesting thing about a tuxedo," he'd said.

The interesting fucking thing.

You'd lunged at him as a physical reaction of your anger, yes. That much is true. You'd gladly admit to that in a court of law, or if pressed by Mary in the more subtle courtroom of marriage. You might choose to reserve mention of the fact that in that moment, you simply had to have your hands on him, and any form would have done. You required his weight against the restaurant tile, the choke of his breath as he caught it in surprise, and, most gratifying, the utter dormancy of his considerable strength. He let you touch him. He somehow understood. He didn’t understand that the last thing you wanted to see as you proposed to your second choice for a life partner was your first, alive when he should have been dead, blooming with health and humor like some kind of perverse fucking flower, but he understood your need to hold him as evidence in your hands. You can't imagine that he didn't catch the pressure of your fingers as they brushed his pulse point before you were dragged away by an army of fine dining staff.  
Later, you’d almost broken his nose just to see the reality of blood pumping out to the throb of his heart.

You stop at the corner shop to buy Mary's favorite kind of ice cream and a packet of crisps. So far, she has weathered few of the symptoms you've seen present themselves in your other pregnant patients, but cravings are a constant. You hope that this meager presentation will be enough to evoke her forgiveness.

You find her in the sitting room with a glass of lemonade and a tiny sweater strung between two knitting needles. She looks up at you with an intriguing lack of fury, though it's almost ten thirty on a Thursday and your hair is mussed suggestively.

"I know it's early on," she says with a smile, "but I just know it's going to be a girl.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you proffer the ice cream and crisps.

"Ah! Oh, John, that's perfect, thank you. Leave it there for me, will you?”

Her expression is so peaceful that it borders on euphoric. You wonder if you should worry that she's self-medicating with something that might harm the baby. No, she'd never do that. You're the reckless, slightly unstable one. In her lavender nightgown and matching slippers, she's a vision of motherly grace; a lamplit madonna in pajama’d repose.

You leave your peace offering on the coffee table and kneel between her legs. With both hands, you cup the small swell of her stomach. Unbelievable, the power contained just beyond the barrier of her buzzing flesh. The power to ground you like nothing has ever grounded you before. The power to erase you entirely; to draw you all over again in blood and bone and breath. You press your lips to her navel. She grins.

"Come on, husband," she hums. "It's high time you slept in your own bed.”

If only she knew.

 

  
At four in the morning, you wake to the sound of a text.

_Domesticity suits you, John. You’ve put on seven pounds since you got married. S_

You scowl. Of course he’d break his moratorium on communication with an insult at a rude hour. Any quixotic notions you fostered about the rise and fall of his sleeping chest mere hours ago are suddenly fleeting.

_It's actually four pounds._

You count fifteen seconds before he replies.

_Mary and I think seven._

Why does he do this? Why can’t he go torture the object of his supposed fucking affection? Why are you gripping your phone like it alone anchors you to this Earth? Because at least he’s talking to you. At least you’re reading words that he thought of and intended for you alone. You suppose that wasn’t a difficult deduction.

You press your face into your pillow. Let him wonder if he’s pissed you off past the point of responding. Allow him to worry, for once in his life, that he’s lost you.

(That’s not fair, you know—he did drag you out of a bonfire.)

_Dinner tonight?_

You grin in spite of yourself.

_I'll have to check with Mary._

_She’s already agreed to it. She thinks we should spend more time together. Think she might want some time to herself, not sure. Hard to deduce from texting._

_Angelo’s at 8?_

Fine, you utter bastard.

_See you then._

 

 

Despite its convenient location in central London, you haven’t been to Angelo’s since the night you shot the cabbie. Sherlock clearly can’t say the same; he’s greeted with even more warmth and excitement than the first time, and promised a wide array of romantic accompaniments. This time, you don’t even bother to correct the assumption that you’re his date. If you’re very honest, you’re not sure anymore that you’re not. That you ever weren’t.

Without discussion, you both move to sit at the same table as you did on that first stakeout.  
“Have you. . .have you brought other people here?” you manage. “Since that night, I mean.” Shit. He’ll see through you. He always does. He’s going to sniff out your jealousy and then he’s going to chastise you or panic and leave or worse, calmly reject you. Reject what? What is it that you want from him?

He squints at you uncertainly, as though you’ve just asked him to prove the existence of a dead God he doesn’t believe in. Several seconds pass. He finally settles on a perfunctory reply:

“Sorry?”

“Nevermind,” you say. “I seem to remember the lasagna being excellent. You should try some. Mrs. Hudson and I have been worried sick about your recent, shall we say, lackadaisical approach to nourishment.”

To your surprise, he murmurs a quiet agreement, and is soon making his way through a lovingly plated portion of it. You carry on in comfortable silence, enjoying the sight and sound of him existing, consuming, metabolizing, oxidizing and antioxidizing. Is this the influence of the mystery lover? Is all of this—the clean flat, the sudden agreeableness, the late night request to meet in a public place?

Or does the lover even know about this? Are they jealous? No, what would they be jealous of? They probably think it’s nice to see two friends so close, so platonically intimate. They even share a bed sometimes. How lovely. How fucking modern.

After you’re satisfied that he’s gleaned as much subsistence as possible from the plate in front of him, you rest your hands on the table and lean forward. “So,” you say. “Is there a reason for this little get together?”

The crease between his eyes appears. “Does there have to be a reason?”

“No, no. . .but I mean, there was the random early morning invitation, which made me think that perhaps you had something urgent to discuss. A case, maybe. Remember those? And then there’s the fact that I’ve had to practically beg on my knees for the past few weeks to get more than three words out of you.” You lick your lips unconsciously. “Oh, and the fact that the last words you did manage were to announce the last thing I ever expected to hear from you. But no, you’re right, there doesn’t have to be a reason. This is all perfectly normal best friend stuff.”  
“Don’t be sarcastic, John. It doesn’t suit you.”

You clench and unclench your fists where he can see them. He flinches, and you stop abruptly.  
“I’m truly sorry about the last few weeks. You were much more patient than I had any right to expect. Even if you did mess up my sock index.” He looks wry for one precious second, and then so deeply uncomfortable that you worry he might bolt for the door. “I wanted you to come because. . .” He looks down. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

“I’ve got all night,” you say, and you mean it.

“I have a list, too.”

You sputter. “Pardon?” You recall the drunken blog draft. Stupid, stupid—so corny and naïve and stupid. You didn’t press publish, did you? No. Mary would have read it and left already. Someone would have said. What fucking list?

“The list on your blog, of course.” He steeples his fingers in front of his lips and stares into your (wide, horrorstruck) eyes. “Don’t worry. You didn’t publish it.”

“Then how did you—?”

“I deduced it from the pattern in your stubble and the pollen on your shoes.”

“You—you deduced a whole list from that?”

He sighs dramatically. “No, you idiot, I guessed your password. Really, John, you should be more careful. Not everyone’s intentions are as pure as mine.”

“P-pure? Jesus Christ.” You’re nauseous, you’re ill, you’re going to fall down. You must look as though you might faint, because he wraps a long white hand around your wrist to steady you. It has the opposite effect.

“John, please. Calm down. I have something to say to you. Something I’ve meant to say for a very long time, but which, due to extenuating circumstances, has become increasingly difficult to bring up.”

“Extenuating circumstances.”

He closes his eyes and inhales so slowly that you believe he is counting in his head. He exhales with a quiet whoosh. “Mary.”

“I, I’m sorry. You’re going to have to elucidate a bit, because I’m sure as fuck not going to get this on my own.”

He swallows, releases your wrist, and moves to a folder that you didn’t notice has been resting by his elbow this whole time. He produces a single sheet of paper on which something appears to have been written with a typewriter. Something that looks, from a distance, a lot like a list.  
“I started it in Eastern Europe,” he says, his voice pitched slightly higher than its natural baritone. “Used to add to it to help me sleep. It was so hard to sleep out there, John. You have no idea.”

Your hands are shaking as you take it. Mycroft may have noted their steadiness on that same night, years ago, but this is not like being abducted or shooting a man. This is a far more quiet danger, devastating in its unfamiliarity.

Suggestions on the Care of Dr. John Hamish Watson in the Absence of His Flatmate, Confidante, and General Center of World, Sherlock Holmes

_1\. Milk, no sugar, unless you’re testing a compound._

_  
2\. Occasionally confiscate his laptop. Monitor porn preferences and e-mails to girlfriends using appropriate methodology. I generally find plot graphs to be sufficient. Add any significant diversions in content to his file._

_  
3\. Jumper colors provide some insight into his inner state. The maroon one tends to mean a new girlfriend. Blue typically follows a break up. The oatmeal one represents neutrality or sometimes exhaustion. Christmas ones mean Christmas. Haven’t yet cracked the code of the soft-looking black one, but could conduct an entire study of its impact on feelings in my stomach._

_  
4\. Sometimes he’s moody for reasons that are impossible to deduce. I find that in these situations, a well placed six-pack of beer in the fridge does not go unappreciated._

_  
5\. His nightmares are worse when the moon is full. I think that the light from the window disturbs him. On those nights, I recommend waiting until he falls asleep and then coming in to draw the blinds. It seems to help. If that’s not enough, he also responds well to a hand against his forehead. Sometimes I watch him sleep all night, in case he needs me to provide that service._

_  
6\. He’s susceptible to mood music. Depending on your motive, he can be swayed by the romance of Dvořák, the joyful urgency of Beethoven, or the Baroque drama of Bach. I have convinced him to perform all manner of menial chores for me with nothing but my bow. It is best to make use of this knowledge sparingly, as it can easily cross into morally gray terrain._

_  
7\. When he brings women home, he considers it a major trespass for you to listen at the door. Caught once. Unpleasant. Was only trying to gauge and catalogue his reactions to certain stimuli. For research. Meant to synthesize those findings with the graphical data taken from his romps on the internet._

_  
8\. Ignore number 7. Irrelevant._

  
Number 9 is smudged to the point that you can’t read it. You can just make out the words “hair,” “golden” and smile.” At the very bottom of the page, a note has been written in ink.

  
_10\. If you are, in fact, my successor in the care of Dr. John Hamish Watson, then I beg of you: do better than I ever did. Make tea for him. Cook for him. Clean for him. Don’t scowl or sulk. Always answer when he asks you something. Don’t incessantly show off your useless, unwanted skill sets. Don’t manipulate him with chemicals or elementary psychology. Never call him an idiot. Watch his stupid television shows, put up with his sometimes appalling small talk, laugh at his jokes—even the egregiously unfunny ones. Kiss him on the mouth. Act like he is the most magnificent, brilliant person in the world. It probably won’t be an act. I doubt you’ve met anyone better._

The last lines become increasingly hard to read through your tears. You meet his eyes, which have not left you. They are wet and full.

“So,” he exhales, as though he’s been holding his breath since you started reading. “I’d thought to give it to Mary as a wedding gift, but that seemed somehow. . .immensely inappropriate.”  
You gently take his wrist in your hand and place two fingers against his pulse point. Nothing has ever been more real than the hard, fast meter of his heart. “Let’s go home.”

 

  
You keep your fingers on his pulse throughout the cab ride, through the doorway, and up the stairs.

 

  
Suddenly you are facing him in the sitting room of 221B. Universes expand and collapse in his dilated pupils, which seem unsure of where to focus.

“Who is it?” you breathe, though you know, of course you know. Maybe you always knew. Have to hear him say it. Need the evidence.

“It’s you.” He steps forward and places one hand behind your neck and the other between your shoulders, so that you could almost be dancing. “It’s always been you. You’re my conductor of light. Don’t you know that? I did tell you, at least once.” He moves his lips to your ear. “I’ve been trying to tell you again. I know that I’ve made a mess of it.”

You’re trembling like you do after a nightmare, but this is the furthest thing possible from a nightmare. This is the cure to end all nightmares. He pulls you closer, so that every part of you is touching part of him. His chin comes to rest on the top of your head. He smells of cigarettes and the woods.

Observe, John. Remember this for later. Forever.

Slowly, so slowly that you’re not sure, at first, that it’s happening, he places his hands under your chin and points your face upward.

You’ve never been kissed so carefully. He traces your lower lip with the tip of his tongue, then gasps as you respond with your own. He’s never done this, you think. How can that be? These lips were made to be parted, caressed, gently bitten. It’s a travesty. A crime to be solved and avenged. He sighs into your lungs and you sigh back into his, until your chests are full of the other’s breath.

He starts to object when you finally come up for air, but is silenced by your lips at the hollow of his throat. You run your tongue along the ridge of his neck, adding the tastes of salt and smoke to your growing stack of evidence for his continued, glowing existence.

“You said I’d never be luminous,” you breathe, sinking your teeth into his clavicle.

“Wh-what?” His eyes have rolled back into his head; if it weren’t for your arms around him, he might be in danger of collapse. You step backward into your chair and settle him awkwardly on your lap, lips never leaving his neck.

“You said,” you pant in between kisses, “some people who aren’t geniuses have the amazing ability to stimulate it in others.”

“Mmph,” he whines, “I said—I said you’d never be the most luminous of people.” He struggles to meet your eyes even as you begin work on the delicate shell of his ear. You’re determined to taste all of him; to commit every sensory detail to memory. Who knows if you’ll ever get the chance again. “But I was wrong, John,” he says, his gaze finally level with yours. “You are by far the most luminous, bright creature I have ever had the good fortune to know. You are, you are, you are.

You find the place under his jaw where his pulse rises visibly and suck a line of red inflorescence into his skin. “Mine,” you say in a voice that echoes up from caves deep in your gut. “You are never going to leave again.”

He whimpers in reply. You slowly begin to undress him. First comes the suit jacket, its tailored lines crumpled into mere laundry as you fling it to the floor. Then the shirt, in its histrionic shade of purple. He helps you with the trousers; you push them off of him and into the pile with one fluid movement, a predatory pressure building behind your eyes.

You have to stop for a moment to behold him: a spectacle of flushed white anatomy and wine dark curls, heaving through swollen lips like some kind of dirty Bacchic reverie. You press your mouth to his hip before relieving him of his final scrap of clothing.

“John,” he thrums, “there’s something you should know.” You continue kissing up the porcelain of his inner thighs. “Irene Adler. . . .Irene Adler isn’t dead.” You pause to look at him, even as your fingers continue their fevered crusade up to cup the curve of his arse. “She was going to be beheaded in Karachi. . .I saved her at the last moment.”

A shock of jealousy hits your blood. “Oh. So. . .”

He shakes his head violently. “Not my area, as you know. But she did,” he shifts under you, pulling away, “impart a bit of her, um, knowledge, while I was with her.” With a few deft movements, he evades your grasp and pushes you back into your chair, so that he is suddenly knelt between your legs, undoing the button of your jeans. “She had an idea of what you might like.”

You can't help but laugh. “Oh my god. You got sex tips from The Woman?”

“She’s an expert in her field, John,” he says as he lovingly pulls the fabric from your right and then your left leg. “I don’t consult amateurs, either.” He grins. “As you can imagine, I was a rather quick study.”

Any further questions, along with all the air in your lungs, are knocked out of you as he tentatively puts his lips to your cock. He presses his tongue flat against your frenelum, then circles and sucks the head experimentally. He looks up at you with a sort of wonder, which you return, your mouth agape. He licks up your shaft, then back down again, before taking all of you into his mouth.

“Ffffffuuucccckkk.”

He develops a rhythm, pausing occasionally to gaze up at you, as though to make sure you’re not bored. You reassure him with more theatrics than you’ve ever expressed in this position—or they would be theatrics if they weren’t so genuine.

He attempts to swallow you down further; the constriction of his throat makes you twitch.

“Come here, come here.” You pull gently at his bare shoulders. He comes up for air, looking confused.

“Not good?” he asks.

Your heart breaks. “Oh, no, SO good. So, so fucking perfect. But I don’t want it to be over before I’ve even gotten to touch you.”

The vision of his darkened eyes and sanguine mouth could finish you alone. You kiss him desperately, trying to spell out with your tongue all of the ways he is the only person you’ve ever felt this for, who will ever make you shiver and suffer like this. He undoes the buttons of your shirt and pushes it from your shoulders.

“I want everything, John,” he whispers. “I want to be whole.”

You drag your hand through his curls and kiss his forehead. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

You trace his lips with your index finger; he kisses the tip and sucks down, twirling his tongue. You push your face into his chest and slowly move the finger down, down to part his legs and press against the tight whorl of flesh that’s keeping you apart. He emits a strained, high sound as you begin to push in a millimeter at a time. “Sssh,” you say, “you’re okay, you’re okay.” He exhales sharply, eyes closed so tightly that you bet he can see stars. You hold him closer to your chest as you begin to move, slowly, in and out. His breath comes in quick, shuddery bursts.

“Do you want me to keep going?”

He nods.

"We need to find something slick before we go any further.”

He looks at you with a familiar expression of incredulity, softened by the wideness of his pupils.

"Saliva is perfectly sufficient lubricant for intercourse.”

"Says the person who's never had intercourse.”

He huffs into your shoulder. "There's glycerin under the kitchen sink. Will that do?”

"Should work fine."

With a groan, he untangles his long limbs from your hold and stumbles toward the kitchen. You inhale sharply when you notice clear marks from your fingers on his right hip.

The energy within the room seems to shift in the seconds that it takes for him to return. He stands before you, naked and erect and unsure and perfect, gripping the bottle more tightly than necessary. As if worried that you've changed your mind. As if you could somehow turn away from this, marriage and morality and questions of sexuality be damned, evaporating as they are like the sweat from your skin. You open your arms and he smiles as he steps into them.

Gently, you add another finger to your ministrations, then another. With your breath against his neck, he begins to relax against you.

“Are you ready?”

“God, yes.”

You hold his hips with calculated care as you slowly lower him over your lap. With the guiding help of his hand, you ease in one inch, retreat, then two, until the plush warmth of his arse hits your thighs. He braces himself on the arm of your chair. You are overwhelmed to the point of shouting by the rightness of it; by the poignancy of what can only be described as coming home after a lifetime adrift. His satin warmth around you feels more like belonging than anything you've felt before.

To your surprise, he takes control, and begins writhing at an ambitious pace that you rise to meet. His hair stands on end; he looks wanton, electrified. He bears down at an angle and gasps hard.

You open your mouth against the column of his throat, breathing hard as he gingerly comes down again at the angle that elicited that luscious string of profanity. "Unnhh, John. John John John JOHN John.”

"That's Captain Watson to you," you say with a grin into his neck.

"OH my god," he cries, "you can't do that. It ISN'T fair.”

You wrap his legs around your waist and stand abruptly, prompting a delicious shout of surprise as you flip him around and commence pounding him into the chair.

He scratches at your back, but you have complete control. He quickly surrenders, his ankles limp against your shoulders. You kiss him as deeply as you can from this vantage, luxuriating in the red flush across his cheekbones.

He squirms gorgeously beneath you, hitting you with wave after wave of white heat. It can't last much longer. You slow your pace to a more deliberate rate and look into the supernovas exploding in the centers of his eyes. You wrap your hand around his cock and pump to the rhythm of your hips. "You're going to come with me," you say. It is not a request. He nods, and then his face contorts into a map of everything that's ever truly mattered to you, lines and meridians all leading to the place where he ends and you begin. When you come it's like falling down a waterfall.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Water drums against your skin with a pressure so familiar you could cry. Each squeak of the pipes falls on your ears like a benediction. It’s been years since you leaned against this tile. Its emerald color soothes you like it did whenever you had mere seconds to douse yourself in water between a case and the clinic. Now, the tender force of Sherlock’s mouth on yours pushes you flush against it. You grip the back of his neck and guide his tongue with a tempered caress. Tonight must last forever. It has to.

His hair drips like ink down his forehead and cheeks. His eyes are clear and soft and warm, so warm, where they once were cold and far away. He parts his lips, as if waiting for your next command.

You reach for his soap. He keeps his focus on your face as you work a cedar-scented lather between your hands. You begin with his neck, attending to the scarlet mark that you left there. He closes his eyes. Your hands drift across his chest, over his shoulders, down and under his arms. You smooth the fine hair over his heart, dip into his navel, cup his hips.

“When you died, all I wanted was to examine your body myself.” You briefly hold his cock, then ghost over the delicate sac of his scrotum. He twitches, but otherwise remains still. “I begged Molly, Lestrade, even Mycroft. I wanted my name on all of the official papers, in the role of medical examiner. I don’t know why—I’m not that kind of doctor, and it’s not like it was going to bring you back.” You hold the soap to his stomach and draw circles of foam that radiate across his torso. “They all told me it was too late, and there was nothing for it, even though I knew—I thought I knew—that you were there in a drawer at Bart’s morgue, where I’d stood with you a hundred times before.” You kneel, rubbing lightly down his thighs and at the thin skin around his knees. You press a kiss to his right ankle. “It’s macabre, but I just had to touch you one more time. I had checked your pulse when you were on the ground, and seen the blood, but it wasn’t enough. I had to have more evidence. For closure.”

As you stand, you slide your hands up the backs of his legs. His eyes are still closed. He shivers, though the water is almost scalding. You trail your fingers down his spine to his sacrum.   
“I’m so infinitely sorry, John.”

“Yes. I know. And I forgave you the moment I saw you. I just needed. . .time.”

“I know.”

You put your hand to his face; he leans into you so that you cradle his jaw in your hand. “Who am I to question the gift of you, here, now. So very not dead.”

 

  
Dawn threatens the windows with cool light. His damp head rests against your chest. With one hand, you pull the duvet around his shoulders.

“Are you asleep?”

He looks up at you with heavy lids. “Not at all.”

A warmth that has been building in your toes and spreading upward with every touch and sight and smell of him reaches your chest. “How long have you. . .you know.”

“What?”

“How long have you known?” You look down at him. “Why did you never say?”

His exhale could either be a laugh or a sob. “You can’t really think I imagined that would go well. You, with your girlfriends and your regular job.” He meets your eyes. “I knew that you were addicted to the cases; to the danger and the intrigue, and maybe a little bit to me, in an abstract way. But you were also preoccupied with maintaining a veneer of what felt like normalcy to you. You couldn’t simply live with a man without needing to qualify it as just a close friendship—that’s why you insisted on dating all of those women, even if you didn’t like some of them enough to remember details about them. You needed the world to remember, so that you could remember, that you were a doctor and a soldier, not just some freak’s sidekick. And I told myself that was enough.”

The warmth, which has reached your fingers, ebbs into coldness. “Oh, Sherlock.” You wrap your arms around him and press a kiss to wet curls. “But I stopped seeing the women. I quit the job. That last year, I went everywhere you asked and did everything you said without question. Didn’t that tell you something?”

“Maybe.” He looks thoughtful. “I can’t say that I was fully clear on what you meant to me. It takes a lot of vigilance to suppress and delete everything vaguely resembling an emotion.” He closes his eyes. “The fact that I couldn’t—or maybe it was that I didn’t want to, couldn’t ever bring myself to—override my love for you, for your sake and mine, was. . .more than I knew how to handle. I couldn’t distract myself from it with cases like I could distract myself from cocaine or cigarettes. The only thing that kind of worked was what you’ve complained about often enough.”  
You kiss the hollows under his eyes. “The violin.”

“Yes. I’ve composed eighty four pieces about you. I’ll give them to you, if you want. They’re revoltingly sentimental.”

You laugh, aware, for the millionth time in the past twenty four hours, of tears in your eyes. “I want to hear them all.”

You grip his sides and kiss the hollow of his throat, the place between his collarbones, down to his solar plexus. “Anything you’ve given me is more than I deserve. I owe you everything.” You run your tongue along the lines of his hip bones; he shudders and presses into your mouth. His cock stirs against his stomach. “You are saving me even now. Especially now. I’ve never wanted to be anything but with you.”

He throws his head back. “Don’t stop, John. Please.”

You curve your hands around his upper thighs and drag him toward you. He’s completely exposed. Vulnerable. In your care. You lick your finger and trace his entrance. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He gasps when you replace the finger with your tongue. You grip his hips and slide him even closer. He tastes of salt and musk. As you lick him in a circular motion, you brush your thumb over the soft heat of his testes. Above you, his voice rises and deepens. You push in further, past initial tightness, and begin to probe him, slowly. Spindly fingers reach into your hair and pull, not quite too hard. You add a finger, seeking the smooth curve of his prostate. When you find it, he all but screams.

You join your hand with his as it slides over his erection. “I’m going to, oh my god, John, I am going to.”

He does, quaking cataclysmically around your tongue, keening in a voice several octaves higher than his own. You remove your tongue and replace it with your cock in one smooth thrust; within what feels like seconds, you finish inside him. You collapse onto his chest.

For several moments, you breathe the air of his room, anointed with smells of you and him and home. His eyes are closed. His mouth trembles slightly. You kiss it.

“It can last longer than that,” you say.

His eyes, as they open, are dark and dazed. “I know. But maybe not when you’re doing. . .that. Is that what they teach you in medical school?”

You laugh. “Of course not. Picked it up in the army.”

His gapes at you, incredulous.

You grin. “No, that was just. . .instinct. Need. A need to show you, even a for a moment, how incredible you are. A little knowledge of male anatomy didn’t hurt, either.”

He closes his mouth. “I didn’t. . .I didn’t know. That anything could feel like that. It was. . .like drugs. Better than drugs. Should do a study on the number of GABA and dopamine receptors activated during that, um. Act.”

“I’d be happy to help.” You smile against his neck. “Might want to study the effects on the person giving as well as receiving. I’ve never felt anything hotter in my life than the taste of you”—he blushes in the rapidly increasing daylight—“around me, making those noises. I think I’ll be high on it for days.”

You push up from the bed and touch the stickiness of your chest.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Sssh.” You step out of the room and return a few moments later with a damp flannel. You resume your post on the left side of the bed and gently mop the mess from his stomach. He starts to protest—always the difficult patient, when fully awake. “Let me,” you say. He stills, watching your face. You part his legs and scrub lightly at the reddened flesh there. You place the flannel on the nightstand beside you. “You love me.”

“What?”

“I think I’ve heard you say that more times tonight than collectively ever before. It’s kind of nice. You, at a loss for words.” He smiles, cheeks flushed almost crimson. “Never seen you blush before, either. I think I could get used to it. But as I was saying. You love me.”

“I. . .I.”  
“You said it. You said you were in love, before I knew it was with me. You said you couldn’t bring yourself to override your love for me. You said it at the wedding, too. You said, ‘the two people who love you most in the world.’ That means you love me.”  
“I also said that all emotions, in particular love, stand opposed to the cold reason I hold above all things.”

You smile. “You said that before the other thing. And anyway,” you look toward his list, which lays crinkled on the chair by the wardrobe, “I think you’ve rather called your own bluff.” You kiss the space beneath his lower lip. “You love me. You’re a warm-blooded, non-sociopath person who loves another person, and it’s me.” It sounds gorgeous, said out loud, laid out like that. It sounds true.

“You knew that. You know that.”

“Say it.”

He inhales deeply. “I.”

“Have you ever said it to anyone before?”

“I don’t know.”

You place your hand on his chest. “Then I’ll say it first. I love you.”

The corners of his mouth turn down and his eyes fill with tears. It’s still strange to see him cry. Strange and surprising and beautiful and amazing, as he never fails to be. You lean down and gather him into your arms.

“It just seems so inadequate,” he breathes into your ear. “The atomic measurement of the heat in your hands; the physics of them holding me down, holding me together. The chemistry of every jolt in my stomach; the rods and cones that let me perceive the color of your hair and eyes; the nerve endings that prick and hum and raise the hair on my arms when you’re so much as near me, to say nothing of when you are actually touching me, invading me. When I look at you, everything that was once unfathomable makes sense. So yes, of course, I love you.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.” You reach for your phone. His eyes widen in alarm.

“What are you doing?”

“Telling Mary that we drank too much on a case gone bad, and that we need to talk when I get home.”

“No,” he says. “Just—just like that?”

“I don’t want to lie to her, Sherlock. I’ve had enough lying in the past few years to last a lifetime.”

“But she’s your wife.”

You set your mouth in a grim line. “Yes. I’m well aware of that.”

“You took vows.”  
“Look. I never, for a second, thought that you were going to come back to life.” You sigh. “Mary was a respite. A dressing on the wound. I love her, of course. We're going to have a baby. But to apologize for what I feel for you would be to apologize for the miraculous restoration of a lost limb. I can’t. I won’t. You are me. I am you. It’s not something that anyone else can measure up to.” You close your eyes and take a breath. “She’ll have to understand.”

“Wait to text her,” he says. “She’ll have been asleep for hours now. The damage is done.”  
You nod, unsure, and settle into the open curves of space around his body. They accommodate you perfectly. Awash in the steady sound of his breath, you fall into the best sleep you’ve had since before he died.

 

  
When you wake up, he is in the kitchen, trying and failing to be quiet. How many times you must have woken him while getting ready for work. You wonder if he minded. He never said.

You’re not sure where your clothes are, so you slip into one of his dressing gowns. The red one. You’re pretty sure it’s your favorite, but right now it smells like cigarettes.

“You really have to stop smoking,” you say as you wander into the kitchen. “As your consulting physician, I insist.”

You find him sitting at the table with his fingers steepled against his lips. Two cups of coffee have been poured and rest alongside a pile of toast and two soft boiled eggs. “Wow,” you say, “this is an occasion.”

He doesn’t return your smile. “As much as I would love to claim that I’m celebrating the way you rather ceremoniously deflowered and then forced confessions of love out of me, I’m afraid that we have to talk about something else.”

You take your place in the chair across from him. “You’re not going to change my mind,” you say. “I know you care for Mary, and that it will hurt you as well as me to have her out of our lives, but I can’t just. . .you aren’t just an affair to me. You’re everything.”

“Please, John. It’s not that. Well, it is.” He stares at the table in front of you. “You can’t leave Mary. Not yet.”

You’ve missed something. He’s doing what he always does: revealing just enough of some secret to keep you guessing and in line. You fight the quiver of rage that threatens to enter your tone. “And why not?”

“There’s. . .a case. Something I have to do. It involves the lives and wellbeing of many, many people.”

“And. . .it requires that I stay with Mary? Why?”

“Janine.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Mary’s friend. Her maid of honor. Remember?”

“Yes. She’s been round since then. Kind of obnoxious, to be honest. But I never like any of Mary’s friends.”

He snorts. “Yes, well. I need her. She’s the P.A. of a very important, dangerous person, and I require her compliance in order to break into his office.”

“Her compliance.”

“I need to convince her that I’m interested in her. Date her, seduce her, whatever. I’m afraid that the only thing that will get her to breach her employer’s trust is a marriage proposal.”

Your tremor becomes uncontrollable; you clench and unclench your fist on the table several times. He watches you with a mixture of sadness and wariness. “You have to seduce her. Propose to her. For God’s sake, Sherlock.”

“Not sleep with her. I could never do that.” He tentatively places his hand in yours as your fist unclenches. His touch calms you. You thread your fingers through his in spite of yourself. “I’m yours, John. Always. I’ll never betray you. But I have to do this. It’s. . .it’s bigger than us. It’s for the greater good.”

You sniff. “The greater good. You really are married to your work, aren’t you?”

He flinches. “I can’t expect you to accept it. It’s almost physically unbearable for me to sit here right now, sober, and watch you react. It feels like I’m being cleaved in two.” His hand trembles in yours, and you know that it’s true. “But this is what I am, too, John. I’m needed. You’re needed. Stay with Mary. Let her down slowly. It will only be for a month.”

“A month.”

“Yes. A month. Repeating everything I say won’t make it any shorter.”

You laugh in cold disbelief. “I don’t think I can, Sherlock. I can’t rot in the suburbs while some woman touches you. Will she stay here? Wear this?” You manically grip the fabric of the dressing gown. “Will she make tea for you and scrub your floors? Will she listen to your deductions and your”—your voice cracks—“violin?”

“John.”

“I can’t. I can’t. I’ll go, yes, I’ll go and I’ll be quiet. For now. But I can’t live with knowing that she’ll be here and I’ll be there. Not for any length of time.”

He closes his eyes. “Please.”

You rise abruptly, kicking the chair as you do. Dishes clatter and coffee spills. You round the table, grip the sides of his face, and kiss him soundly. “God help me. I’ll do anything for you. It will definitely, definitely be the death of me someday. Maybe someday soon.”

He keeps his eyes closed as you stomp into the sitting room, shrug into your discarded clothes, and slam the door behind you.


	4. Chapter 4

As you open your front door to the smell of wet paint, it hits you: this is the Saturday you were supposed to help decorate the nursery. Tendrils of gentle music extend from the room upstairs down to the threshold where you clench and unclench your fists, unable to lift your eyes past an unseen marker on the floor. The domestic scent of cinnamon burgeons beneath the paint. Your blood beats in your ears. The game, then. It’s on.

She sits cross-legged on the plush blue carpet, a stencil of a picket fence pressed between her fingers and the wall. Her posture is strong, practical, straight-forward: she holds herself with the same composure that she smilingly goads your adolescent patients toward as they slouch in the waiting room of the clinic. The crisp frame of her shoulders reveals nothing.

  
“I’m so sorry, Mary.”

She turns fluidly, not moving the stencil. “Oh! I didn’t hear you over the music.” She reaches over to the small speaker dock and decreases the volume, leaving white finger prints on its surface. “Why are you sorry?”

“I. . .I didn’t call. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

Her smile almost reaches her eyes. “But Sherlock told me everything. He said you two ended up on a stake out until four in the morning, and that Baker Street ended up being closer. Very apologetic, bless him. Anyway, don’t worry. I knew when we got married that I’d have to share you a bit, and I’m fine with that. You’re here now. Pick up that tray and pour in some yellow, would you? I want to get some sunflowers in before it’s dark.”

You do as directed, praying that the chemical tang of the paint will mask the slight smell of sex that clings to your skin. Guilt blooms sickly in your stomach as you hope ardently, desperately that you’ll be able to find it again later, in the sitting room, after she’s gone to sleep.

“Oh, he asked for Janine’s number, too. Do you think they might have really hit it off at the wedding?” Realization distorts her features. “D’you suppose that she’s the one he’s in love with? Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Yeah. Wow, yeah. I congratulated him on pulling—didn’t think it’d really happened.” The black bile rising in your throat nearly spills out of your mouth as you twist it into a kind of grimace/smile.

“My maid of honor, your best man—I never thought, but it makes so much sense! We’ll have to have them over all the time. Maybe she and I can help you with your cases—like a kind of crime-solving network!”

Your look of horror does not go unnoticed. She thins her lips. “Well. At least I’ll have someone to talk to you when you two go running off. And it is always good to have another perspective on a case. Even Sherlock would agree to that. He must miss it, now that you’re not there. Oh, she’ll be so good for him to have!”

“Ah. Well. He’s hardly proposed or anything.”

The knowing tilt of her head inspires a chain of violent fantasies that startle you into even further nausea. “It’s just a matter of time.”

 

  
In the brief eternity between your return from Afghanistan and the move into 221B, you were sometimes assaulted by the stench of war. A greasy olio of diesel, dust, blood and decay would close over your face like a hand and force you awake, gasping. The hint of anything that brought you back to a battlefield would weaken you for hours and make your leg throb bitterly.

  
This, you think, as you hunt for the scent of forest floor in corners of your clothing, is worse. He haunts you impossibly, appearing on the wind when he is miles away, rising in shower steam, mingling with and morphing into other fragrances that lead you to press your face into couch cushions, tube seats, strangers’ coat-clad shoulders, only dimly concerned with getting caught. Each heady instance makes you dizzy. Every passing cigarette overwhelms you with lust and loss, threatening the integrity of your legs on the ground.

Work quickly becomes a confusion of patient notes and disgruntled faces that wrinkle into uglier and uglier shapes as you say the wrong name here, get the condition wrong there, pause too long on a diagnosis, fail to control your shaking hands as you write out a prescription. Sleep seems mythical. You stare for hours into the cold void of the only text he’s sent since you left 221B: _Delete this. Correspondence insecure. Website. Whitman. S_

You hardly expected love poems, but this—this is too like him. He hasn’t changed at all. Everything’s a guessing game, an illustration of how much more clever and together he can be than you. He hasn’t replied to any of the queries you fire at him like missiles every hour.  
What do you mean, insecure?

Sherlock, you can’t do this to me. You have to say something back.

What if I don’t delete it? What will happen?

Who or what is Whitman?

Why do you hate me?

 

  
A week passes before your eyes like the final seconds before death. Lurid images froth behind the multiplying doors of your mind shack. You should hate him for this. It should be him, not Janine, slung between four horses, about to be quartered. His mouth should be the one under your surgeon’s needle as you sew it shut. Instead, every time you close your eyes, he is flush against you, leading you through the steps of a dance you don’t know the name of but which intoxicates you, invites you to invade all remaining space until it would be impossible even under a microscope to determine what separates you from him. Against the hot curve of your hand around your cock, he begs you to make him whole, splayed out on his bed like a patient on a table. Cure me, Dr. Watson, he laughs, then wails. The violence of this chemical cascade. You complete him so many times and in so many ways that you wake up sweating in the sitting room next to a bottle of Scotch nearly every morning. You crawl into the territory beside Mary minutes before her alarm goes off.

 

  
On the seventh night, you break out of a reverie and reach for your laptop. Website. Whitman. You open a tab and, without thought to why, Google The Science of Deduction.

The familiarity of the gray text against the aqua background makes your head hurt. You click on Forum. The last entry is from years ago: Kirsty Stapleton’s fateful plea for help finding her rabbit. The precursor to everything that happened at Baskerville. Stabs of guilt for that. Again, you could hate him—for lying to you, attempting to drug you, locking you in a room with the sole purpose of scaring you, all in the name of a mad “experiment.” But instead, you still hate yourself for leaving him in front of the fire, a shaking red-rimmed mess of someone who had finally begun to come undone. Maybe you could have found out that night, if you’d tried, that you had more power over him than you’d ever known. Perhaps if you’d followed every instinct you ever had to touch him, to draw a doctorly hand over his strings (pulled so tight), you would have found him as pliable awake as when half asleep.

You stare at the screen. There’s an administrative log-in page, just like on your blog. Website. Whitman. You type in the box for username: SHolmes. Password: Whitman.

Nothing. Of course not. You click on the tab marked Hidden Messages. He acted so nonchalant about those ciphers, but you always suspected that he was shaken and a bit thrilled by the notion of an anonymous stalker.

There’s something new. A series of numbers, posted by Sherlock five days ago. Nothing else, except for the letters LoG. The numbers read:  
53 1-1, 2-2, 2-109, 2-4, 2-115, 7-807, 4-1-76

A code? A cipher? From Sherlock, to who? You wonder if he’s been communicating with Anonymous again. There had been some concern during the Death over the safety of that particular participant in your blog’s comment section—perhaps he finally reached out when the fraud theories were debunked.

  
You decide—drunkenly, you admit—not to rule out the possibility that this could be a message to you. Not as straightforward and endlessly more infuriating than a simple text, e-mail or phone call, but this is Sherlock. And he did seem concerned about discretion. Whitman. LoG. Walt? Walt Whitman? The American poet? You’ve never known him to read poetry—frivolous, he might say, irrelevant—but you suppose it isn’t out of the question. Basic astronomy may be worth deleting, but poems could show up anywhere, in all kinds of cryptically coded crime scenes. He may have considered memorizing a few key lines. And there is the public school background, of course.

LoG. _Leaves of Grass_. It must be a page number cipher like the one used by the Chinese smuggling ring that you encountered on one of your first big cases, when you were seeing Sarah. He’s set up a code for you to crack. You grin. Maybe you were wrong not to expect love poems.

You think that Mary has a copy, somewhere. Is it the right edition? It must be, if he chose it—he would have made sure to use a book that you own. You retrieve it with surprising ease, as the spine protrudes slightly from a bookshelf at eye level. Was that him? How long has he been planning this? Did he sneak in and move a book just to help you follow along with his elaborate system of relaying messages? Maybe. Of course.

So the number corresponds to the first word on the page to which it refers. And the dashes? Must refer to. . .the stanza.

You decode it. The message reads: You here to I but no there books with. Not it, obviously. Fuck. You got it wrong. You fight the temptation to throw the laptop, and instead retrieve your phone.

_Page numbers and stanzas?_

He replies immediately, though it is 3:30 in the morning.

_Just one page number: the first. Then stanzas followed by word numbers after the dash. Delete this. S_

Oh. That makes more sense. You open the book to page 53. I Sing The Body Electric. Stanza 1, word 1. I. Stanza 2, word 2. Love. Stanza 2, 109. You. The hairs at the back of your neck rise to attention. The decoded message reads:

_I love you, body and soul._

_I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,_

_To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,_

_To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,_

_To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly_

_round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?_

_I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea._

You blink back tears and close the book. A fingernail catches on the binding; as you adjust it, you catch a flash of an inscription. To Captain Watson. His handwriting. Captain. His captain. So, not Mary’s copy. Something he slipped into your bookshelf at some point, hoping it would catch your eye. So typical of him. Hidden gifts. Things to notice, to unfold. Everything has to be clever.  
You move back to the laptop and the log-in screen. Username: SHolmes. Password: captainmycaptain. It works.


	5. Chapter 5

“Can you pick up the flowers?” She clicks around you on her way out the clinic door. “I’ve got to dash home to start everything. They’ll be round at 7. Don’t forget: asters and violets.”

You nod. She catches the sullen glaze of your eyes and kisses your cheek. “It’s just dinner. I’ll see you soon.”

 

  
A high-pitched chorus announces their arrival: “Oh, look how far along you are already! You’re glowing.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me—I can’t believe how fast I’m having to buy new clothes.”

There’s a vulgar smack of mouths against cheeks. You sense Sherlock’s stoic stillness against Mary’s greeting without needing to hear his voice.

“Look at you two! It’s like you’ve always been together. I don’t know why I didn’t push harder for it before.”

“Ah, well, you how Sherl is—doesn’t exactly like to be pushed into things, does he? Had to let him come to me.” You can almost hear her lashes come together in a gummy wink.  
Sherl? For fuck’s sake. You round the corner into the kitchen, unable to keep yourself from him any longer. The shock of his smiling face strikes you like lightning. He all but leans on her, his fingers entwined with hers almost absent-mindedly. She grins up at him and places two fingers on the edge of his mouth; he catches them and presses a kiss to each finger tip. He could not look more at ease. You brace yourself against the refrigerator, grasping through your mind shack for Ella’s PTSD mantras. They elude you. It was fake, it was fake. It wasn’t real. You were a locked room, a controlled space—an experiment on the way to more definite, comfortable, heterosexual leanings. Mary squints at you, unable to quite ignore the measured one two three four counts of your inhales and exhales.

“John,” she says, “is everything ready in the dining room?”

“Y-yeah, of course. It is. Yeah. Let’s all. . .go there, shall we.”

As he passes you, he makes sure that Janine is completely in front of him before looking into your eyes. Harsh ache churns greyly there. Body and soul, he mouths. His fingers still cling to hers as she leads him out of the room. Even from here, you imagine that you can smell pine, cedar, earth. The joints in your knees do not stabilize for several seconds.

 

  
Dinner is deafening. The clink of cutlery and swirl of liquid in glass make you twitch and jump so often that Mary reaches out a hand to steady you. Her expression is hard to read.  
“And so that’s when I thought, “I know those verses—it’s an Irish folk song! Every kid in my village learned it in nursery school. The murderer wasn’t threatening to kill other victims—he was sending a message. . .”

“. . .to his children, kidnapped by their nanny twenty years ago. In blood. A kind of latent apology. Elegant, in a way.” He catches your eye at the word “apology.” You look away.  
Janine shoves him, gazing at him fondly over a forkful of salad. “Now, now, Mr. Sociopath, let’s not get carried away.” She leans in and almost whispers to him, just loudly enough that you and Mary are privy to the heated drama in her voice. “Remember: I know what you’re really like.”  
You make a choked noise that you follow with several gulps of water. When you put your glass down, he is smiling at her, as though conceding to her wealth of hidden knowledge about him.  
“Amazing how well you two have got on in such a short time.” Mary’s smile is wide, but you know her well enough to sense a darkness in her words. Doubt, maybe? Does Janine have some sort of track record? Whose welfare is she concerned for? Absently, she drums her fingers against the table. You follow Sherlock’s eyes, warmed by (false?) fondness but still sharp as ever, to Janine’s fingers, which have begun to mirror Mary’s tic.

“Janine,” says Mary, “will you help me clear the dishes? I’m sure these two have a lot to talk about. You’ve had Sherlock all to yourself for more than a week!”

Slight strain shows at the corners of Janine’s eyes, but she quickly pops up and begins gathering plates. “Of course. I brought the wedding scrapbooks, too, if you want to look.”  
“Oh, perfect! Let’s press some of these flowers.”

When their voices have faded to a murmer, Sherlock’s face changes. The smile around his eyes and mouth slackens; he brings his hands to his cheeks and rubs them, as if trying to rid himself of a loathsome taint. You allow the dimmest candle of hope to light in your stomach.

“Bedroom,” he says.

You fall in step behind him, barely conscious of your dragging feet. As you stumble in, suddenly confronted by the sight of your marital bed in his tall shadow, he locks the door.

“This is risky,” you say, voice as shaky as you feel. “I think Mary suspects something.”

“I know she does.” His voice rolls deeply toward you like thunder. “But I don’t care about Mary right now.”

He kisses you as if to consume you; you cling to him, desperate not to cry like the child his performance has rendered you. It doesn’t work. His arms ensconce you like a chrysalis and you wish you could stay here for the course of some kind of metamorphosis—anything to transform you into someone able to deal with this. “Please tell me you’re just that good of an actor,” you sob. “And more than that, tell me this will be worth it somehow.”

“She doesn’t matter, John.” He looks down at you and places his fingers beneath your chin. “It will be worth it. I promise. There will be knighthoods and good press and probably some money, if we play it right.”

“I don’t give a fuck about anything but getting away from here and having you.”

He twines his hands through your hair and pulls gently, as if checking all of your reflexes. “I know. Neither do I. But lives depend on this. A lot of lives.”

You replace your speaking voice with a primal growl. “Get on the bed. We don’t have much time.”

He complies, hands on your hips, legs pressed against your thighs. You unfold him like a letter.

He hands you his shirt. Run your hands down his sides, as if checking for the raised marks of her signature. Say, “This bruise wasn’t here before,” before you cover it with your mouth. “These scratches.”

“Altercation with a rose bush.”

“I’m sure.”

“John, I promise. I haven’t had sex with her.”

You tear off the seal of his trousers. “How is that possible?” Press your nose to him. Seek out the most concentrated points of that lush, vital smell. “You haven’t been smoking. Why? She doesn’t like it?”

“No. You don’t like it.”

“Never stopped you before.”

“Yes, it did. You’re being—” he sighs as you bite light circles into his shoulder—“unfair.”

“No.” You place a hand on the center of his abdomen, so that his limbs splay out in four directions. “The madness you are burning into me is unfair. The silence, Sherlock. It's cutting me up.”

You grip him hard through his pants with a pressure that is almost not loving. A tear escapes the dam of his eyes, squeezed closed so tight it must hurt. “Picture me at your wedding, John. Really picture me.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t believe you.”

You push off of him and curl into yourself, knees brought to your chest. Suddenly, you don’t want to fuck him. You just want to hold him down, aligned with him from shoulders to feet. You want a shared coffin and six feet of soft earth above you so that you can finally, finally have him to yourself, safe and unsullied by foreign hands. The thought terrifies you. He has suffered so much. More than you’ve ever dared consider. On the run for two years. Tortured, assaulted. Not for England or the world. For you, so that you might go on smiling and breathing and fucking other people. “I’m so sorry.”

He lays his hands on your shoulders and settles over you, head against your heart. “No. There can be no more apology between us. Not while we’re both alive.”

Moments pass as blessed little eternities. Over the hum of your heartbearts and his, you hear the high, tense notes of an argument.

“John,” he says. The bass of the word reverberates against your chest. “I. . .I don’t think that Mary is who you think she is. Who we thought.”

Before he can elaborate, Janine’s voice cuts through the house. “Sherl? We’re leaving. Where are you?”

He rises steadily. It is not the startled jump of a cheating lover about to be caught, but the grave bearing up of a soldier returning to battle. You follow. He presses his mouth to yours swiftly, but with such warm force that you know you will feel it for days, weeks, years. “I love you inexorably,” he says. “We can’t call or text; she’s too quick and too jealous. This is too important.”

You nod, though the motion is nearly impossible to execute around the lump in your throat. His fingers against the nape of your neck are the last thing you feel before he slips from the room and into the form of someone else’s lover.

 

  
Mary doesn’t speak to you for nearly the rest of the evening. You do the dishes in a silence that is both welcome and somehow threatening. She arranges flowers between pages on the dining room table. As you pass her on your way to the sitting room, you notice one of the books: Leaves of Grass. Of course. It’s heavy, long. Perfect for that kind of work. Her gaze has frozen over the inscription.

“John,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Nothing. I think that went well, don’t you?”

“Mmhm. Very. . .marital of us, having couples for friends.”

“Yes.”

You say nothing on your way to your chair, where you know that she knows you will sleep tonight. Something on the bookshelf across from you catches your eye. A bright spine, protruding slightly from the second shelf. You stand and retrieve the book. 99 Poems by e.e. cummings. The corner of a page has been turned down.

_my love is building a building_

_around you,a frail slippery_

_house,a strong fragile house_

_(beginning at the singular beginning  
of your smile)a skilful uncouth_

_prison, a precise clumsy_

_prison(building thatandthis into Thus,_

_Around the reckless magic of your mouth)  
my love is building a magic, a discrete_

_tower of magic and(as i guess)_  
when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall  
crumble the mouth-flower fleet 

_He’ll not my tower,_

_laborious, casual  
where the surrounded smile_

_hangs  
breathless_


	6. Chapter 6

Days pass. Patients gripe and scowl and threaten to contact higher ups. Dinners are cooked, go cold, get scraped into the bin. There is an endless washing of dishes. Scotch. So much Scotch. Liver failure imminent. Under eye bags change shape, gain dimension.

Mary: pregnant, cold, pregnant, warm, pregnant, sad, pregnant, pregnant, pregnant. Mary watching telly, grinning down into her knitting. Mary in the shower, singing idly. Mary’s hands against your back on the rare nights you join her in bed, the language of their precise pressure communicating desire, frustration, worry, jealousy. Feigning ignorance is easy. You were never a native speaker of her touch, and you fell out of practice the second he showed up breathless in that damned tuxedo.

Four weeks (twenty eight days) on and there’s a new message on the website: 42-2, 4, 74-2, 23, 35-7, 90, 89-5, 204.

Decoded with the e.e. cummings book, it reads: _Tomorrow night. Seven. Baker Street._

Finally. You smile into your glass and then crawl into the space by her side for what can only be the last time. She murmurs and laughs in her sleep. You lace your hands around the globe of her stomach and fancy that you feel a kick. I’ll not abandon you, you think. You’ll always have me, and him, too. He will love you, and you can’t know until it happens how good that will be; how gorgeous it is to be loved by him. You’ll be ours and hers and one day I believe you’ll both understand.

 

  
You’re woken by a knock at the door. Mary pads behind you in her dressing gown as you open it to find your neighbor, Kate, in a state of obvious distress.

“It’s Isaac,” she says.

Husband? No, son. Mary’s disapproval is palpable, as when she has relayed yet another patient’s flustered dissatisfaction.

“If it’s Sherlock Holmes you want, I haven’t seen him in ages.”

She (Mary) looks at you. “Three weeks,” she says softly.

Kate furrows her brow. “Who’s Sherlock Holmes?”

Mary smirks. “That does happen sometimes, you know.”

You clench and unclench your fist. She doesn’t notice, as blind to your cues as you’ve been pretending to be to hers.  
You’ll go, of course—your lymphatic fluid’s gone all stagnant from long nights of boozy mooning, and anyway, how else should you kill time until tonight?

She follows you out, still in a dressing gown. “Why are you all. . .what’s the matter with you?”  
“There is nothing the matter with me.”

“Ha.” She moves to the car.

“No. You’re not coming. You’re pregnant.”

“You’re not going. I’m pregnant.” She bounces into the driver’s seat and turns the ignition. You rub the back of your neck and acquiesce into the passenger side.

 

  
The staggered breathing of the junkie on the floor prompts you to consider, briefly, who you’ve become in the past month. An adulterer, yes—that was immediate, a red letter you accepted without surprise or even much torture; a drinker, certainly, so much so that you’ve been forced to acknowledge the genetic likelihood that you share your sister’s illness; a bad doctor, reduced to using your knowledge to hurt rather than heal. It isn’t the first time, but every other instance has been justified by the cold banner of war or, more recently and welcomely, the grateful wonder alight in his irises after the fact. He isn’t here, now, to tell you with a look that it was okay to disarm a man who posed no real threat.

For Isaac, then. “Isaac Whitney,” you announce to the room of slack-jawed addicts. Loose collections of limbs squirm further into dark spaces like snakes startled in their holes. “Isaac Whitney?”

A young (painfully young, tragically young) voice answers from a few paces away. “Dr. Watson?”  
“Jesus, Isaac.” You check his vitals and unwrap the shoelace from his arm. His eyes aren’t as clear as they should be. He can’t be older than eighteen.

“Ah, hello, John. Didn’t expect to see you here.” You glaciate. Sherlock’s voice behind you shakes the room. Your stomach goes warm and is flooded with an anxious milieu of impressions: coffee, thunder, childhood fears and their antidotes. “Have you come for me, too?”  
His image crackles as it hits your retinas. Filthy like he never is, dressed in something foul. All smirking, wicked nonchalance.

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“It’s not. It’s bloody not what it.” Your hand contracts mutinously. You turn to Isaac and help him to his feet. He looks nervous, relieved, and very much like a child who underestimated the consequences of running away from home. “Mary’s outside in the car. Get in. I’ll be right there.”  
Sherlock looks at you calmly. His eyes have the audacity to suggest a bit of heat and mischief. He reaches for your wrist.

“No.” You jerk away. “Look at yourself. I’ve been drinking myself to death and sleeping in a bed of lies so that you can go through with whatever god damned case is so important, and I find you in a crack den smelling like the plague and almost certainly fucking high.”  
“Exactly! You’ve been drinking yourself to death. This is what I have.” He sounds strangely adolescent. He brings his hands to his temples. “But that’s not what this is, John. It’s for a case. The case. Come home with me. I’ll explain then.”

“No. We’re going to Bart’s and you’re going to piss in a jar, or so fucking help me.”

“I’ve already told you—there’s no need. It’ll come up positive. But I’m not addicted. It’s for the case.” He breaks your gaze and consults the floor. “And I needed an excuse to be away for the night.”

You exhale. “Okay.” The mutinous hand joins your other in a gesture of surrender and defeat. “Okay, okay. Your way. Always your way.”

As you stride toward the stairs with the military gait he once remarked upon, you extend your hand back toward him. He grasps it, and the febrile reassurance of his skin replaces the bits of you that have been eroding in his absence.

You release him as the car comes into view. “Argue with me,” you say. “She needs to believe that I’m angry. Which I am.”

He doesn’t miss a beat. He rips the makeshift plywood door from the exit as he shouts, “For GOD’S sake, John, I’m on a CASE.”

“Three weeks, that’s all it took.” You look down from the industrial staircase to the car where Mary’s face is pinched in confusion and anger.

“I’m working.”

“Sherlock Holmes in a drug den—how’s that gonna look?”

“I’m undercover.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, I’m not NOW!”

She pulls the car up to you with an aggressive screech of wheels. “In. Both of you. Now.”

 

  
She takes Isaac and you take Shezza. Alarm lights of annoyance dim in favor of the radiance that shines from his mouth and eyes in the cab. He folds his hand over your thigh. “We’re being watched,” he whispers into your ear. He’s dirtier than you’ve ever known him to be; the musk and woods of him beside you is so heady it makes you dizzy and a bit giddy. “I love you I love you I love you.”

Years of repression have barely taught you how to contain the swim of your stomach, the voltage pulsing up your spine, the scorch of your cheeks. “You’re bloody high.”  
“On you.” He looks out the window, as if checking for cameras, and then kisses the back of your neck. “I’m high on you spraining that boy’s wrist, and the fact that you have a tire lever down your trousers.” He runs his finger over it. “I’m high on the new gray in your hair and lines around your eyes.” He presses his lips to them. “And that you couldn’t even wait another morning in the suburbs before marching into danger.”

“That place was hardly dangerous, Shezza.” The impact of your words is tempered by their breathlessness, made more pronounced by his hand, which has moved down to trace and cup you through your jeans. “Mmph, we’re in a cab.”

He withdraws, but keeps his leg flush against yours. You press the backs of your fingers to his forehead and then rake them through his greasy hair. So stripped of his customary polish, he looks almost homeless. This must be a truly epic case.

 

  
“What is my brother doing here?” He adjusts the knocker. “He’s OCD—doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”

“I’ll just pay, then, shall I?”

You hear him react to Mycroft’s presence on the stairs before you follow him through the door.  
“I called him,” you say. “I’m still utterly pissed at you.”

Sherlock looks at you with more fond irritation than contempt. Interesting to note how, where you’d once agonize for sleepless hours over the mystery of his inner state, his emotional climate is now readily available to you in the contours of his face and timbre of his voice. Not that you’d ever presume, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wasn’t lying.

Upstairs, the brothers exchange an irritable volley of words as Anderson and another member of Sherlock’s fan club search the flat for drugs. A name is offered by way of explanation for his behavior: Magnussen. It sounds like a fairytale villain, and instills a look of something intriguingly similar to terror on Mycroft’s glacial features. He cryptically (but not effectively—not half as scary as he thinks, you can’t help but always muse in his presence) threatens and dismisses the raid party.

When they’ve left, the argument escalates to surprising violence: Sherlock neatly twists Mycroft into painful submission against the wall, entreating him to not appall him when high. The last thing you should feel is aroused, but there it is. You’re gasping for him.

You appear at his shoulder and call upon Captain Watson’s most menacing tone, trying and failing to keep the heat from it: “Mycroft, don’t say another word. He could rip you in half, and right now, I’m fairly certain that he might.” You proffer his umbrella as a final, savory insult. He retreats down the stairs and into the insignificance of everything beyond these walls.

 

You turn to the blaze of Sherlock’s gaze on you. “I don’t know how I ever stopped myself,” he says. He lunges for you. The slide of his tongue over yours reduces you to noises unsuited to your idea of a man, much less a soldier or a doctor. You’ve never cared less about anything. He backs you into the wall beside the door, riffling through your clothes like pages; ah, the tire lever, he’s removed it, grinning in fevered wonder at it before tossing it to the floor. Your skin almost vibrates under the plush attentions of his lips, dragged down your neck to your suprasternal notch, pressed to the cloth above your navel, back up to the eager command of your mouth. You pull his hips to yours and grind against him, hissing at the contact of his need against yours. “We can’t,” he moans. “My. . .bedroom door.”

You tighten the circumference of your arms around him and press your mouth to the secret tract behind his ear. “What,” you breathe, “is behind your bedroom door.”

He gently extricates himself from your grip, looking like he might cry. His absence leaves you almost as cold as when he died. “You know what.”

He closes his hands around yours to still their manic seizing. “I’ll get rid of her.” His face has the thoughtfully murderous air it acquires when he’s considering the fate of someone who has hurt one of the few people he loves. “In the meantime, I need a bath.”

You grin in spite of yourself. “You really do.”

“And then I think I owe you some answers.”

“Some explanation would be nice, yes.”

As he disappears behind the bathroom door, the bedroom creaks open, and the well-turned curve of a thigh materializes.

“Oh, hi, John.” Bashful bite of the lip, flutter of the eyelashes. How amazing, these dynamic little female tics. How they used be enough to bring you to your knees. “Have they gone? I heard shouting.”

She’s wearing his shirt. Behind the straining doors of your mind shack, you’re assaulted with every image you’ve held in the past month of dismembering her, each more creative than the last. Blood drips from your clenching hands onto the floor. You barely remember that you should act surprised to see her. “Janine?”

“Was it Mike?”

“Mike?”

“You know—his brother?”

“Mycroft?”

“Do people actually call him that?”

“. . .Yeah.”

She wanders into the kitchen. “Oh, is that the time? I’m going to be late. Would you be a love and make some coffee?”

You stare blankly at her. This is what it’s come to. Making coffee for your soulmate’s fake lover. This is what you get for surviving Afghanistan. You numbly paw at the tea shelf.

“Oh, it’s over there now.” She grins tightly. “Where’s Sherl?”

Sherl. Sherl. “He’s in the shower. I’m sure he’ll be out shortly.”

“Like he ever is.” She grins conspiratorially. How lovely that head would look under your foot.  
Medical impossibility aside, you feel your liver slide into your guts as she walks down the hall and into the bathroom. His throaty greeting resonates against the walls, transmogrifying into a requiem for your sanity.

 

  
When she’s finally, finally left—after a display involving a kiss that nearly had you doubled over—he (newly minted in a suit, gorgeous and pine-scented as ever) turns to you and says, “Appledore.”

“What?”

He explains: the vaults, the blackmail, the flat, sharklike eyes. His mouth curls with unprecedented contempt.

Soon after, the villain arrives in person. “This is my office.”

The glass of his gaze makes your skin crawl, certainly, to say nothing of your feelings on his use of the fireplace as a urinal. But even in that awful moment, your attention is on Sherlock. For once, he stands still. The suggestion of a quiver haunts his rich, knowing voice. This is not the anxious flirtation of his dialogue with Moriarty, nor the condescending mockery with which he treats petty criminals. He looks, to your dismay, like a scared child out of his depth.  
“Did you notice the one extraordinary thing he did,” he breathes in the sooty wake of Magnussen’s departure.

“Um, yeah.” You glare at the fireplace.

“He showed us the letters.”

“. . .Right.”

“Tonight is the night, John. I have to go shopping.”

“Oh.”

He returns to his body and the room and looks at you. “You think. . .you still think I had sex with Janine.”

“Had crossed my mind, yeah.”

“I assure you, I did not.” He takes your hand. His heat revives you, makes walking possible again. “I’ll show you.”

He leads you into his bedroom, which looks much the same as it did the last time you were here, with a few stomach-churning additions. A bottle of perfume and a small pink leather bag sully the top of the wardrobe. A few dresses hang in the closet. A cloying smell rises with the humidity from the shower.

You sigh. “What am I looking for?”

“I didn’t sleep here last night, nor the night before. It’s important that Magnussen believe me to be a drug addict so that he thinks he has leverage over me in that capacity.”

“Yes. Okay. So. . .why is she sleeping here, if you’re not even around?”

“I. . .I’m not exactly sure, to be honest. Women, relationships. Confusing. Not my area. But I do see her in the evenings before I go out to ‘score.’”

“Which you have actually been doing—don’t play innocent.”

“Right. Well. She seems to like staying here. Says she feels “close” to me.” He rolls his eyes. “I allow it, because it’s hardly a disadvantage if Magnussen thinks that Janine is a so-called pressure point of mine, too.” He glances at you out of the corner of his eye. “Anything to keep focus off of you.”

“I’m your pressure point?” You grin up at him; he responds with a chastening quirk of his lips.  
“Obviously.”

Warmth pools in your stomach, even as you consider the strangeness of Janine’s sleepovers. “Hmm. I’ve had some needy girlfriends, but none who’d want to stay over when I wasn’t even there. How is it that you’re not having sex with her?”

“Honestly, John. I’m not even prepared to have sex with you.”

“What?”

“I mean, I am, I want to, all the time, more than anything. . .but it’s a lot. You’re. . .a lot. Overwhelming. Everything. If you think that I can turn that sort of thing on like I can mimic the behavior of someone who’s besotted, well. You’re wrong. I can’t.”

You’re not sure what to say. He takes your hand in his.

“I’ve managed, through skillful evasion, to keep putting her off. Lately, though, she’s been getting. . .eager. Grabby. Possibly even suspicious.”  
“If I jumped into the shower with you regularly only to have you not shag me directly after, I’d be suspicious too.”

He looks confused, but agrees. “Right. The sight of naked human bodies lead to. . .urges. Arousal. Etcetera.”

“. . .Yes.” You meet his eyes. He shifts a bit restlessly, breaking your gaze. “Isn’t that. . .don’t you feel that way, too?”

“With you. Only you. Always you.”

“Oh.” You place your hand under his jaw to direct his eyes back to yours.

“When I said I was yours, John, I meant it. There were never others, and there won’t ever be. So please, don’t doubt me. This ends tonight.”

He leans down to kiss you. It begins as a light brush of lips. He breathes lightly over one end of your mouth to the other; you pull his lower lip in, sucking it slowly, languorously. He tastes, very simply, like home. You have no better descriptor. You unclasp the single button of his jacket and slip it over his arms to fall on the floor.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you,” you say.

“I do not ask any more delight,” he whispers as he pulls you down to the bed. “I swim in it as in a sea.”

With each button you undo, you pause to kiss the new plane of skin revealed.

“Why did I even bother getting dressed,” he laughs.

“Mmm,” you growl, “I’m going to keep you out of clothes for a week as soon as this mess is over with.”

You feel him harden beneath you. He grins. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand the standard fascination with nudity, but I’ll happily comply.”

“Not even mine?”

“You,” he breathes as he helps you out of your jumper, “are not a body. You are a country.” He relieves you of your belt and moves your trousers down your wriggling hips. Long fingers curl around your arse. “I could never tire of navigating your roads and,” he envelops your stiffening cock through your pants, “mountains.”

You press your forehead to his, straining into his touch. “You really are a poet.” He dips his hand past the fabric and wraps it around you, moving up and down, his thumb rubbing a drop of moisture from the glans into the dip of your frenulum. “Mmmm, oh. Who”—you gasp, almost losing balance on your arm— “knew.”

He shucks the fabric from you and forces it over your feet. You move to his side so that you lie parallel, holding his face as you kiss him so deeply it feels like you’re drowning.  
He breaks away to lick his hand with a suggestive flourish. Your breath catches and he smiles wickedly. He reaches down to where you’ve been rutting against him and presses your leaking shaft to his own. He covers you both with two hands, varying pressure in his strokes. You expel a heavy hiss and recapture his mouth, opening yours against it, breathing his air.  
“Do you want to come like this,” he says, the deepness of his voice so potent that you think you could really get drunk on it, could forever lose what few faculties that remain to you.

“Yes. God, yes.”

He picks up speed; you thrust up, consumed by the fact of being held in those elegant, clever hands, so capable of good and evil and anything he chooses. His eyes are closed, his lips parted, and you have the strange but distinct impression that you are looking at a self portrait. You feel him tense as light begins to spool in your cells, concentrated in your stomach and groin; you bite down on his lip as he cries out, shuddering and spilling on to you. The spools unravel and at least a billion glowing threads shoot from your center out to every nerve ending, so that you are consumed by white fire, shouting past the curve of his shoulder.

You collapse against him. He keeps his eyes closed, smiling openly, peacefully, purely. “Stay,” he says as he feels your gradual appraisal of the mess between you. “For one moment.”

His hands are covered in both of you; it drips from them like honey. He holds them up, away from you, and surrounds you with his shoulders and forearms alone. You surrender to the sunny crush of his embrace. He holds you for several moments.

“Sherlock,” you finally, begrudgingly say, “you’re going to ruin these sheets if you don’t wash your hands.”

He mumbles into your hair. “Don’t care.”

You smile and kiss around the perimeter of his mouth. “But what will Janine say?”

“Doesn’t matter. She’ll never see them again.”

“You’re going to propose to her and then. . .that's it? Just like that?”

He opens his eyes and looks into yours. “Yes. Does that shock you?”

You sigh. “No. I’ll be doing something similar with Mary, soon enough. Maybe with a bit more ceremony, though.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When are you going to tell her?”

“After. . .after we break in tonight, I guess.”

He nods. “Come on, then. I need to shower, again. And then we’ve got shopping to do.”


	7. Chapter 7

In the cab from the jewelry store, he traces circles around your bare ring finger. He keeps his other hand pressed to his lips, eyes locked on the chrome and spark of London through rain drops on the window.

“What did you mean,” you say, “when you said that you don’t think Mary is who thought?”

  
His eyes widen. He taps his index finger along the bow of his mouth. “Beats like digits.”

  
“Pardon?”

He begins to tap out a rhythm against your open palm. “When Moriarty came to see me just after his trial, he supposedly left me with the code that could unlock any door or hack any software in the world.”

“Yes, right. That’s why all of those assassins moved to Baker Street. They mentioned it on the news, too, after you came back.”

“The news. . .the news. . .” You can almost see the columns and cornices of his mind palace through the black of his pupils. He shakes his head slightly, as if to disperse images that have been collecting and obscuring his vision. “It took me days to figure out what he’d allegedly given me—remember? All he’d touched was that apple.”

“Yes. So what was it?”

“He had tapped it out on his knee. It was the pattern of beats and rests from Bach’s Partita No. 1. He wanted me to think that it was binary code: every beat a one, every rest a zero. But it was meaningless. Not nearly complex enough to be a computer code, and certainly not one capable of taking down the best computer defense systems in the world.”

“Then how did he do it? The Bank, the Tower, the prison?”

“As he did everything, John. With a pool of willing participants, made that way by force or with the promise of money. Daylight robbery, he called it. That’s why I had to disarm his network. To neutralize all those far-reaching circuits of influence. That’s why I had to fall.”

You nod, slowly. “Okay. But what has that got to do with Mary?”

He looks down at you with darting, sharp-edged eyes. He’s heating up; in the old days, you would expect the machine gun recitations of a deduction to follow. “Over the course of that dinner three weeks ago, Mary was growing increasingly agitated. Her irritation was evident in the twitching of her right eye and increased tension in her shoulders. Saw a lot of that on our late nights planning the wedding. I would have chalked it up to suspicion and jealousy due to what she sensed as sexual tension between us—you really weren’t leaving a lot to the imagination, John, I watched you murder Janine in your head at least twelve times and with escalating grotesquerie—until she started to do something very interesting.” He pauses for effect, increasing the pressure of his pattern on your palm.

“She. . .she seemed annoyed with Janine. When she said that she knew what you were really like. Mary said it was amazing how quickly you’d got on, and she didn’t sound happy about it.”  
“Yes, John. Good. But more than that, before and during and after that, she was tapping. Tap-tap-tapping on the table. Further sign of agitation, and one that I’ve seen from her before, though never with such intensity. What made it fascinating—Janine was tapping back. They kept it up for quite awhile, this fervent staccato of beats and rests. It got to the point that I couldn’t write it off as coincidence.”

You emit a breathy scoff. “So. . .what? You’re saying that Mary and Janine have some secret tapping language? Like Morse? That’s quite a theory, even for you. What would they possibly need a code for?”

“Not Morse, John. Binary.”

“Are you still high?”

He shakes his head. “Listen to me. What I’m about to tell you will disturb you. I’m not sure yet what it means in a greater context. I’m asking you to trust me.”

The fire in his gaze stills your blood. “I shouldn’t, but I do. I trust you with my life. With my unborn child’s life. I’ll ask you not to forget that part of your vow when you tell me whatever you think you know, Sherlock.”

He sets his mouth in a line. “I will never forget any part of my vow.” He inhales deeply and releases your hand. “As I suspected, the rhythm of their tapping translated into a message when read as binary code. First Mary said: Don’t touch what isn’t yours. To which Janine responded: Finders keepers. The dead don’t want for anything. Mary: Then it’ll be your corpse and his I step over on my way back to his side. Janine: Back off. You’re paranoid. It’s not my fault your sad English husband’s obsessed with my quarry. At that point, Mary requested Janine’s help with the dishes, and the rest you know.”

Your mouth has fallen open. He opens his Belstaff and wraps it around you so that you are enclosed in cloth and his heat; it does nothing to warm you. He’s almost never wrong, but he has to be this time. His years of hunting and being hunted have begun to take their toll.  
“I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t think you would. Not without concrete evidence. I expect to have some soon, but through what means I’ll acquire it, I can’t say. There are several components of this case that require clarification.”

“It’s a case now? My wife’s nervous tics? No offense, but I think you may be reaching on this one. Not everyone is in on a conspiracy. I know that you just spent two years in a state of heightened awareness and constant anxiety, but there are still normal people in the world.”  
He rolls his eyes.

“What’s it supposed to mean, then? Your corpse and his—Janine’s and yours? That's more than a bit creepy. Back to his side—whose? Moriarty’s? You think that this code somehow connects them to him? Moriarty is dead, and this is Mary we’re talking about, Sherlock. My wife. Your friend. The woman whose trust we’re both quite heartlessly betraying for the sake of this case. The current one that involves you manipulating another, almost certainly innocent woman in one of the cruelest ways imaginable.”

He pulls his coat away from you and shrugs into it, popping the collar so that you can see only the tops of his cheekbones and gleam of his eyes. “I don’t know. I need more data. But it can’t be a coincidence. There’s more to Mary and Janine than we’ve been gambling with.”

As if on cue, the cab stops. CAM Global Media hulks above you. You wish, as you often do, that Sherlock had the sense to use more discretion in the presence of cabbies.

He flings himself from the car in a gust of fabric and curls. With the familiarity of a reflex, you pay and apologize to the driver. By the time you reach the curb, he has disappeared inside the sloping glass and metal of the building. You enter alone, your sleeve pulled over your left hand to shield the unstoppable convulsions there.

You half expect him to have initiated the break-in without you—having neglected, in typical form, to inform you of his exact strategy or your role in it beforehand—but you find him close to the entrance, a grim look on his face and two coffees in his hands. He pushes one toward you.  
“Hiding in plain sight,” he mumbles. “I’m. . .sorry. I shouldn’t have said all of that now.”

“No. But I guess I asked.”

He smiles softly. “Are you ready?”

“To watch you propose to a woman who may or may not be in unknown criminal cahoots with my wife? Just to see her heart break when you tell her you never loved her, but that instead you love her best friend’s husband? Of course. Never been readier for anything.”

 

  
“Don’t make me do it out here,” he purrs. “Not. . .in front of everyone.”

The dainty crackle of Janine’s voice over the intercom: “Do what in front of everyone?”

In the reflection of the elevator camera, his face creases into maps of warm affection that you swear to burn, later, with your grip and breath and tongue. You will ensure that he does not look at anyone but you that way ever, ever again, for any reason.

The glint of the ring prompts a gasp. Suddenly you are both in the elevator, grave and silent. In your periphery, his face relaxes into a portrait of blankness, eyes closed. He inhales and exhales audibly. “Into battle,” he whispers.

A sick impulse to laugh bubbles up from your stomach to your throat. The corners of your mouth twitch.

As you reach the thirty second floor, his features contort into an eerie mimic of joyful anticipation. His long legs execute an exaggerated tip toe around the corner into Magnussen’s office.

Against expectations, the space is devoid of happy laughter, scented embraces or glowing cheeks.

“That’s a bit rude,” he says. “I just proposed to her.”

“Sherlock,” you say. Janine’s crumpled form lies prone near a wall of windows. Blood stains your fingers as you survey the damage.

“Did she faint? Do people really do that?”

“It’s a blow to the head.” Her breath warms the back of your hand. “She’s breathing.”

“There’s another one. Security.”

You glance over to where he’s examining the stocky form of a security guard. “Does he need help?”

“Ex-con, by the look of it. White supremacist, so who cares. Stick with Janine.”

She’s out cold. Faced with the vulnerability of her unconscious shape, your misplaced vitriol subsides. She transforms from the siren you’d pictured into that most neutral of human forms: a patient. “Janine, focus on my voice now. Can you hear me?”

He moves to pick up the trail left by whatever preceded your arrival. It occurs to you that the window of time wherein this violence took place must have been very small indeed—too small for anyone to have escaped via an entrance so secret that not even Sherlock was able to locate it. “Hey,” you hiss. “They must still be here.”  
“So is Magnussen. His seat is still warm. He should be at dinner but he’s still in the building.” His gaze drifts upward to Magnussen’s private apartment. “Upstairs.”

“We should call the police.”

“During our own burglary? You’re really not a natural at this, are you?”

You glare at him.

“No wait, ssh.” He inhales. “Perfume. Not Janine’s.” He pinpoints the answer with a finger in the air. “Claire-de-la-lune. Why do I know it?”

“Mary wears it.”

“No, not Mary. Someone else.”

Without warning, he dashes up the stairs. In the wake of his coat, the room swirls. The lines are wrong; up is down and you feel like you’re falling through the endless windows to the street below. “Sherlock!”

Janine stirs beneath your hands, which rest lightly around her neck and head. “John?”  
The force of your heartbeats causes the room to shake around you. “Heeey, Janine,” you murmur, desperate to channel Dr. Watson even as you fall apart. “Can you follow my finger, please?”

She does, showing no sign of a concussion. “What happened? Where’s Sherl?”  
“I was rather hoping that you could tell me that, actually. Do you know who hit you?”  
“N-no.” Her eyes dart to the right. “They came at me from behind, I think. Is Sherlock okay? Where is he? And why are you here?”

The crack of a bullet shatters glass in your chest, your ears, your vagus nerve.  
Your vision goes black, refocuses, and goes black again, so that you have the impression that someone is turning lights on and off. Janine’s eyes are big, their whites pronounced. She stares at you as if you’ve made an awful sound. Maybe you have, you’re not sure, you’re not sure. You have to get upstairs, but you’re paralyzed. You name every muscle almost calmly, entreating it to work with its neighbor in enough of a synchronous effort to get you off the ground.

“Oh, John,” Janine breathes. “I didn’t quite know until now. How you love him. You love him so hard, don’t you?”

Her strange words shape an antidote; they wash over you, liberating your frozen form. You spring from the floor and run faster than you ever have up the stairs to Magnussen’s apartment.

 

  
For the first few seconds of impact, you could swear that he’s asleep. It doesn’t matter that he’s sprawled with unnatural disorder in a position that you’ve frequently seen in gunshot victims, nor that his blood is seeping into foreign carpet. For a microcosm of time, he’s just fallen asleep while working a case. You’re about to coax him into that half lit place between slumber and the world, where he’ll let you undress him, where he’ll press his face to the crook of your neck while you remove his shoes and check him for fever.

But he is not asleep.

“What the hell happened?” Your voice is not your own. It belongs to someone back in Kandahar, soliciting a fellow officer for facts.

Magnussen’s face has been split open by the telltale edges of a gun. “He got shot.”

The words cut through you like a hole punch. “Jesus.” You peel back his coat to reveal the wound: in his lower chest, on the right side of the sternal border. At the fifth intercostal space—maybe the fifth intercostal cartilage. Possible rib fracture. “Who shot him?!”

Your fingers are on your phone, 999 already dialed. “Emergency. What service do you require?”

 

  
“Sherlock,” you say in the ambulance, fingers pressed to his fluttering pulse point. “We’re losing you.”

 

  
At the hospital, he’s whisked into emergency surgery. Minutes pass as hours. You stare at a point on the floor, two fingers worked through your shirt to rest against your fifth rib. It throbs as your own gunshot wound did, months and years after it scarred over.

 

  
“Dr. Watson.” The head thoracic surgeon shakes your hand and clears his throat. “I hate this word, and I don’t use it lightly—it’s a miracle that your friend is alive. He was clinically dead for several minutes before his heart started again, of its own accord. I’ve never seen anything like it, and frankly, I don’t care to dwell on the physical details of how such a thing is possible. Rehabilitation will be long and painful, but if we can avoid infection and the danger of sepsis, he will make a full recovery. You may see him now.”

Breath evacuates your lungs, leaving you gasping as if you were drowning. The surgeon pats your elbow. “I’ll have someone show you to him.”

 

  
He’s as pale as he was on the pavement in front of Barts, but his chest rises and falls unassisted. No need to guess, now, after his vital state: the facts of his tenuous tie to life are laid out in lights on softly beeping monitors. Fluids drip into him via a vast network of tubes. When your nurse escort finally leaves you, all sympathy and understanding squeezes of your hand, you bring a chair to the edge of his bed. You know better than to touch him. Slowly—you allow every inch you move a full second—you position your face over his, eyes open to his closed lids, noses almost touching, so that you breathe his breath. “You carry my heart,” you say into his mouth. “In your heart. So you have to keep it going for me, Sherlock. Because I won’t last another death. I can’t.”

 

  
You spend the night in the chair, eyes open. When he wakes twelve hours later with the word Mary on his lips, you are ready.

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

For the first twenty four hours, morphine blurs his edges, rendering him soft and a little vacant. He smiles as you press the diameter of his hand to your lips and kiss from the edge of his palm to the places between his fingers. The placid beat of his pulse there syncs with yours and keeps you upright.

“John.” Your name is too large in his mouth.

“Ssh.”

You kiss the inside of his wrist, where blood rises minutely, imperceptible to any but a doctor’s eye, to keep oxygen and gravity on Earth. If it stopped, it would all stop. England would fall.  
He inhales as deeply as he can—it will hurt just to breathe for the first few weeks, you were told—and exhales with a sigh. Even now, half conscious, he is restless. Desperate to get back to work.

“It’s over, Sherlock.” You look into his eyes. They widen in a drowsy imitation of protest. “There’s no more case. Magnussen is not your problem anymore. I’m calling it off with Mary tonight, and then I’m going to be right here until they tell me I can take you home. And then I’ll be there. For as long as you’ll have me.”

“No.” The word breaks like glass against his tongue.  
“Yes,” you whisper. “Yes, Sherlock, that is what’s going to happen. For once, we’re doing things my way. This is where yours has got you, and I won’t make the mistake of letting you risk your life again.”

“S’what I do, John.”

You shake your head. “Not this time.”

He closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. “Mary,” he hums, and then he is asleep.

 

She’d begun to call at midnight. The anxious, then piqued, then frantic tones of her voicemails gonged harshly through your skull before you deleted each one.

“John, this isn’t funny. Mrs. Hudson says you and Sherlock never made it back to Baker Street. Where are you?”

“I’m about to call the police. You never even told me where you were going tonight—how am I supposed to find you?”

In the last one, tears crowd the static of the message: “God damn it, John, I’ve called all the hospitals and I found the one that Sherlock’s in. I’ll be there in an hour. I don’t. . .why are you avoiding me? How can you do this to me?”

An excellent actress, you’ll grant her. As good as Sherlock. Better. She must be, if she’s fooled you so well this past year. If only you could ever observe, instead of just see, shallowly, blurrily, whatever it is you want to see.

You’re not sure, yet, if you believe it. Your gut contracts with guilt at the anguish in her recorded voice, and every nerve clangs with the desire to reassure her, even as you contemplate her hypothetical grip on the gun that almost put Sherlock in the ground. Stress hormones are not good for the baby. Neither the psychopathic malice required to put a bullet in a friend.  
No one has told you, yet, that she did it. You couldn’t bear to make him form the labored shape of his assailant’s name. You couldn’t bear to hear it. This moment exists in a gray purgatory where no one would blame you for surrendering to the familiarity of her arms, which held you for months against the repeated, incessant memory of him falling and hitting the ground. You have a few hours to doubt the dark knowing that haunts your core. A reprieve before rage swells in your brain and blacks out the love you once slipped onto her finger in a church before God and witnesses.

 

“John.” She runs to you, but stops short of an embrace. You stand toe to toe, unable to quite make eye contact. “Is he. . .how is he?”

You clear your throat. “Alive. Not awake. . .he’s mostly been sleeping, of course.”

“Right.” She performs a tiny movement that might be a nod. You can barely hear her. “And you? When was the last time you slept?”

You choke on a laugh. “Transport, Mary.”

She humors you with a delicate quirk of her lips.

“I’m fine.”

“No. You’re not. Why don’t you let me take over for a while? I’ll sit vigil. You know, make sure the nurses are treating him alright.”

In spite of your suspicion—brought horrifically home by the fleeting scent of Claire-de-la-lune, which rises in alarm-colored plumes between you—the offer is tempting. You haven’t slept in forty hours. The regularity of the clinic’s schedule, coupled with the lack of cases and danger and intrigue, has stripped down your ability to stay up for days on end. Not that you were ever any good at it.

“No,” you say. You don’t have an excuse, but neither does she. You can’t risk the notion that she might apply that nurse’s knowledge and finish him off with a tampered IV. “No, uh, Mycroft will be here soon. He was at a conference in Germany but he just landed in London. He promised to grant me a recess soon. His words.”

“Ah.”

“Listen, after I do sleep. . .”

“Yes. I think we should. Talk, that is.”

You expel the breath you’ve been holding. “Yeah.”

In a gesture meant to manipulate or simply soothe herself, she places both hands over the curve of her stomach. “Nauseous,” she says when she notices you looking.

“I can give you something.”

“No, Doctor.” She smiles. “I’ll be okay. Let me take you home.”

 

In the suburbs, you sleep in your marital bed for the first time in weeks. When you wake, she is curled beside you, both hands held protectively against her stomach. Deep lines pinch the place between her brows, and her mouth is pursed in silent argument. You do not attempt to feel anything but relief that she is here, where you can see her.

 

When you return to the hospital, Lestrade is beaming in the lobby, a cell phone in his hand.  
“They won’t let you take that in, you know.”  
“Oh, I’m not going to use it. . .just want to take a video.”

The darkness of the room should tip you off before you’re halfway down the hall, but the relief of Greg’s easy air distracts your sapped mind.

“He probably won’t be making much sense,” you say with a tired grin, anticipating Greg’s glee at finding his spitfire consulting detective reduced to torporific slurring.

The sight of the empty bed seems to physically remove something from the region of your stomach: a key element goes missing, an organ or a bone that you need to keep blood and viscera in place.

“Oh, Jesus.”

 

“Where would he go?” The question is asked in quick succession by Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Mycroft, Mary. Bolt holes are prioritized and scoured. It all feels futile. Sherlock will be found when he is ready, by whoever he deems worthy.

From your crumpled post in your chair at 221b, your blood sings with relief at the sight of his name on your phone.

 

You’ve been to Leinster Gardens before, on a stakeout of its former owner. Sherlock seemed almost disappointed when it finally became necessary to arrest the Clarence House cannibal—he’d complained that no one else would be willing to gamble on his level.

You’ve brought morphine and saline and basic first aid from the clinic’s meager stores, but nothing except time will take the gray out of his face and still the panic in your chest. “Why are we doing this?”

“To be sure,” he says. “Well, so that you can be sure.”

“Why now?”

His eyebrows draw together and render the green-white planes of his face even more severe. “So that you can come home to me with a clearer conscience. So that you can begin to move on, starting tonight, if that’s what you want.”

“Of course it’s what I want! It’s what I’ve wanted since this madness started! Are you suggesting that I’d go back to the woman who lied herself into marriage to me and then shot you?”  
“No. I just. . .whatever you need, John, you’ll have.”

You contain a sob as you check his pulse and find it erratic. “What I need is you, alive, without a hole in your chest.”

“It’s almost over.”

He proves her to be what you held, in terror, at a distance: a crack shot, a tyrant, a liar. She has the audacity to threaten him, before she knows you’re there, in a voice you’ve never heard before. “How badly do you want to find out?”

The hole in the coin that she proffers to Sherlock mirrors the phantom one just below your fifth rib.

“It would break him,” she says. How little she knows.

“Baker Street. Now.”

 

She sits between your two chairs, in the one reserved for the people who come to you and Sherlock with their stories.

“What is she?” Sherlock had asked you.

He’d meant the unbelievable. “I’ll take the case,” he’d said. Everything reduced to the finite parameters of a case: to be solved, compartmentalized, titled and blogged. Everything reduced to work.

“How much do you already know?”

“From your skill set, you are or were an intelligence agent. Your accent is currently English but I suspect you are not. You’re on the run from something. Or someone.”

The unnerving glare she has fixed him with since the initial reveal falters, then reconnects. “What do you think you know?”

“Can’t be sure. Seems impossible. Yet there you were, tapping messages back and forth to Janine at your own dining room table in the suburbs, in what could only be his code.”

“His.”

“Moriarty. Is he alive, Mary?”

She inhales sharply and moves her stare to the floor. “And here I thought you’d been slipping. Your infatuation with John did provide a rather perfect preoccupation, just like he said it would. People are so stupid when they’re in love, and I imagine this is your first time coping with those particular chemicals.”

He smiles softly. His hands are shaking, slightly, in his lap; his pupils are dangerously dilated. Despite the confirmation it will lend her words, you reach across to check his pulse.  
“Y-yes,” he says. “You’re right.”

“Jesus, Mary!” You release his wrist and bury your face in your hands. “You knew?”

When she looks at you, there is no sign that the woman you married ever existed.

“Of course I knew.”

She retrieves something from her purse: a flash drive, transcribed with the initials A.G.R.A. “It’s all on here, if you really want to know. He’d been planning this one for years. I never saw him quite so invested in anything as,” she looks at Sherlock with a sick smirk, “burning the heart out of you.”

“Oh Jesus. Oh fuck.” You breathe through your nose to keep from hyperventilating.

“You mean. . .you’re a sort of sleeper agent, for him. He arranged all of this.”

“Yes. Things were set into motion before you jumped off the roof.” She turns to look at you. “I was placed in your path, John. I had nurse’s training from. . .a former life. You were so broken, and you liked me. Please believe me when I say that I liked you. I’ve always enjoyed taking care of people.”

You’ve never been more nauseous in your life. She turns back to where Sherlock is white as paper, sweating through his clothes.

“He watched you dismantle everything he’d built, Sherlock, but it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was taking you apart. Breaking down those walls you had so carefully built up. All he needed to get to you was to get to John. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that he’s your pressure point. Your fatal error.”

Your hands clench and unclench in your hair.

“But he didn’t expect for you to reciprocate so readily, John. Neither did I, to be honest. This. . .affair. It’s dangerous. In so many ways. I’m sure you know by now that it’s best not to trifle with what Jim sees as his.”

"Why didn't you just kill me, then? Why not go with a head shot?”

"What did I just say? He promised to kill you himself, Sherlock--you can't possibly think I'd last very long if I took that from him.”

"Oh." Sherlock’s voice is faint, as though he’s used the last of his oxygen to form the words. "“And Janine?”

“His sister. Fatuous, vain girl. Always jealous of Jim. Thought she could have a bit of fun with his favorite plaything. We didn’t know, for certain, that he was alive, until last week. That facile idiot had the hubris to believe the autopsy reports done by your pathetic hospital.”

“But she was your maid of honor.”

“We’ve been working together for a long time. And as you know, my side of the church was a bit thin.”

He shifts and emits a pained gasp. “I assume that Magnussen has information that threatens you—does it pertain to Moriarty, too? Were you acting on his orders, or was it truly to cover up the fact that you’d lied to John from the start?”

“Magnussen is a rogue element that needs to be eradicated. I think you’ll agree, despite our opposing sides, that he has the potential to become a mogul and a menace. If you think Jim is bad, imagine that kind of influence backed by the full power of the news. He’s gotten cocky these past two years—who knows what he might do if left unchecked.”

“Magnussen worked with Moriarty?”

“Of course. We couldn’t have destroyed your reputation so handily without the media. And where do you think he got this whole notion of “pressure points?” He may be a genius, but he’s hardly original.”

You flinch at her use of “we.”

“I’ll ask you one last thing before my ambulance arrives,” Sherlock says, breathing labored.

“Why are you telling us any of this?”

“Because believe it or not, I also wanted to believe that Jim was really dead. I repaid my debt to him a long time ago, and I’ll be damned if I go back to doing his dirty work. The only thing that matters to me now is this.” She gestures toward the swell of her stomach beneath her coat.

“And I believe that in light of that fact, you will help me.”


	9. Chapter 9

At the hospital, you gain a new name. Nurses and techs whisper in halls and behind desks about Dr. Paranoid’s latest campaign for increased hospital security. Their voices are not unkind. When you nod to them from your posts by the door, by his bed, by the better vending machines on the third floor, you can almost feel the stretch of new lines around your eyes.  
There are rules that dictate how long one can stay in a room during visiting hours, but members of staff have learned to prefer you when you’re placid. Wary eyes follow in the wake of episodes that have featured you, shaking with rage and exhaustion, demanding to know the credentials and background of an unknown radiologist or substitute phlebotomist. No one dares question you on your fourth night at a stretch spent counting his sleeping breaths. You’ve been offered medical care on several occasions, in addition to blankets, nips of whiskey, sympathetic glances, and endless cups of tea. Even Mycroft has expressed concern.

“I can arrange to have you taken to Baker Street for a few hours. For God’s sake, John—you need sleep and a bath and something other than crisps.”

You agree every few days, on the condition that he stay in your stead.

“I’m not going to disappear.” Sherlock attempts to smile.

“Forgive me if I’m hesitant to believe you.”

 

  
You spend most of your time trying to amuse him. He humors you often enough: solves the little cases you pick out of his inbox, manages to follow the rules of Cluedo for a game or two, laughs when you remind him of some absurd detail of an old adventure. The light in his eyes flickers brighter every day and keeps your cells in order.

But too often, he wants to talk about Magnussen.

“Don’t you see? The information in Appledore’s vaults is all that matters now. We could end wars, John. We could shut down criminal networks even more vast than Moriarty’s, and furthermore, we could preemptively strike against him, if he really is back. This extends far beyond your predicament with Mary, dire though it is.”

“Our predicament, I hope.”

“Yes.” He stares at the wall behind you, hands peaked against his lips. “Our problem.”

 

  
Some days, in the quiet hours between treatments and surveys and check-ups, he asks you to you read to him from Leaves of Grass. He corrects your meter, tells you where to place your breaths, and falls asleep with your free hand in his hair.

 

  
Every Friday, Molly meets you in his room at two p.m. You kiss his forehead and he wrinkles his nose.

“I’ll be back by six,” you say. “Make sure he doesn’t spit out his pills, will you?”

“I am not a child.”

“Yes, you are.”

Molly nods and grins. “Don’t be cross, Sherlock. I brought you some case files. We’ve had a few strange ones come in while you’ve been gone.”

 

  
Mary greets you in the same way every week.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry.”

“And you look like shit. I’d say that your paranoia was unfounded, but then, Jim does have a tendency to show up when you least expect him.”

“Very comforting.”

Each time, she’s bigger. You can’t make yourself pretend to play supportive husband as the obstetrician slides an ultrasound probe over her slick stomach. The stiffness between you must be palpable, but it dissipates with the recognition of a toe, an arm, a nose.

“Wow,” you breathe.

“Yeah,” she sighs. She smiles into the screen and squeezes your hand.

For a few seconds, every time, you catch yourself sharing a breath of parental communion with her, wherein the shroud of terror you’ve painted around her falls away and she’s just Mary Watson, your consulting nurse and rock and wife.

Your return to reality and the room hits your stomach with the force of a brick.

 

  
In exchange for your presence at the appointments, she’s agreed to provide you with any available intel on Moriarty’s whereabouts.

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t, really. I wouldn’t, if I were you. But my word is better than nothing, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

“Look, John. I really never wanted any of this to happen. It will probably disgust you to know that after a point, I fully intended to stay Mary Watson for the rest of my life. To bring up this girl with you. She’s yours, in case you doubt it. And I want you in her life. Don’t punish her for my sins.”

“I don’t intend to.”

 

  
When he’s finally allowed home from the hospital, you buy extra locks and install an alarm system.

“Honestly, John, do you think that’s going to stop him? He goes wherever he wants.” He widens his eyes and wiggles his fingers at you. “He walks through walls.”

“No. I’m going to stop him. With this,” you palm your Sig through your pocket, “or this.” You wedge your left foot into the curve of his ankle and push him forward until he loses balance; you catch him and, with some effort, swing him into your arms. He laughs and wraps his arms around your shoulders.

“You’re going to sweep Moriarty off his feet?”

“Disarm him, yes. And then kill him. Slowly.”

He leans in close to your ear. “Are you going to kill me slowly?”

“Kill you? No. Slowly? Yes.”

 

  
After you’ve lowered his feet to the floor of his bedroom with the care you’ve been taught to afford a recent gunshot victim—“I’m not some blushing maid, John, I can take the impact”—you untie the strings of his hospital gown. It comes away in your hand like a shed skin.

“I feel. . .defrocked.” He laughs again, a rising blend of vibrations somewhere near the frequency of honey and the tide. It is a perfect sound: a balm to the fluorescent squalor of the medicine-bleached cell in which he’s languished these past months.

You approach the bed and peel back the duvet to expose the sheets beneath.

“Lay down.”

“If you mean lie down, then fine.”

“Lie down.”

He pouts, then sucks his lower lip under a barrier of grinning teeth. You place both hands on his bare shoulders. He leans in and nips at your chin; you pull back, features stoic, and guide him down to lie on his side, facing away from you.

You arrange yourself behind him, left hand balanced on his hip, and then draw the covers over both of you.

“Are we going to sleep?” The anticipation in his voice, edged with disappointment and a dangerous hint of bored, prompts you to press a kiss to the nape of his neck. You begin to undress yourself, taking your time with each button, occasionally pausing to still his fidgeting form with a palm again his back.

“I can’t see you,” he whines. “It’s maddening. Can I at least turn around?”

“Ssh.”

As you remove your belt, you lift the canopy of the duvet and lay a gentle crack of leather across his arse. He yelps and lifts off of the bed in surprise; you catch him around the waist with one arm and use your other hand pull his head back by a handful of curls. “You still have a lot of healing to do, so I’m going to be gentle with you like I should have been the first time,” you say into his ear.

“Gentle,” he sighs. “Weeks and weeks in bed with nothing but pecks on the cheek, and I’m to be subjected to gentle?” His tone suggests attempted nonchalance, but he’s breathless, eyes rolled back toward your grip on his hair.

“Don’t push your luck.” You count his ribs with your index finger, drawing lines across each one until you reach the fifth. A thick bandage still covers the wound. "May I see?”

“It still hurts. You know that. You don’t need to see.”

“Hmm.”

“Put your palm over it, though. That always helps.”

You move your left hand from his waist to span the affected area. He flinches, then relaxes against you. His spine bows into the curve of your stomach and chest. “Mm, John Watson, you’re better than morphine.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I might.”

You kiss his neck again. “Being in hospital’s made you sentimental.”

“Must be the lack of bloodflow. And nicotine.” He wriggles his arse into your crotch. “Anyway, is tormenting me part of some new therapy protocol?”

You tug on the curls in your grasp. His gasp fills your lungs as if he’d breathed into them. With your left index finger, you map the white expanse of his back, from his vertebra prominens (so visible through skin worn down to paper by months of rejected hospital food and pain-related illness) down to the fine nub of his coccyx. “You have the most beautiful bones,” you whisper.   
“So. . .well-formed.”

“Mm. Your poetry has improved.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Now for the love of God, ravish me a bit. I’ll be good.”

You huff a laugh into his shoulder. “A lifetime of celibacy, and you’re bursting after a few months without sex?”

“What can I say? You awoke something in me. Dragged it to the surface and made it undeletable. That means it’s your responsibility to temper it, do you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

You reach over to the nightstand beside you and retrieve a bottle of lube. “Ah-ah,” you say, your other hand exerting pressure against his attempt to turn over. “Stay where you are.”

“I know what you’re doing,” he says. You can hear him grinning against his fist. “You’ve been planting supplies in my room.”

“Preparations. To make up for last time.”

“I liked it. I was reminded of you with every step I took.”

With one hand, you drag your jeans and pants down your hips and over your feet. You push them down to the edge of the bed with your toes. “Well, I don’t like it.” You pour a measure of lube onto the fingers of your left hand. “Especially not now. You hardly need more to heal from.”  
The muffled beginnings of protests are quieted by your tongue as it retraces the path down his spine. He exhales a hiss as you reach his sacrum, part his cheeks with slick hands, and press your mouth in to lick him in first wide, then concentrated circles.

"Mmmph," he says, “I was hoping you’d do that.”

Every fear, every psychosomatic twinge in your leg and chest, folds like menacing flowers into dark buds as you’re surrounded by his smell and heat. With each exploratory kiss and caress, he relaxes, panting and sighing unhurried moans of sheer, relieved pleasure. You’re met with little resistance as you slide one, then two fingers in to work beside your tongue.

“I still wish I could see you.”

Reluctantly, you withdraw your mouth. You allow yourself a moment to revel in the heady taste of him, so vivid against the grey of the past few months. Kiss the small of his back (lumbar), the middle (thoracic), upper (cervical), between his shoulder blades. Hook your fingers, tease him, build a steady, gentle rhythm. Kiss his neck. Lean over to kiss his lips. Let him open your mouth and taste himself.

“Better.”  
You press your thumb to his tailbone and introduce a third finger to your ministrations; he twitches and tightens around you. Suck on his neck, too lightly to mark him, until he relaxes again.

“Now,” he says. His fingers are curled around his cock but he does not move, not yet; just grips himself and draws his thumb over the leaking head . He smiles when he notices you watching. 

“Now, I said.”

“Now, what?” You grin with your tongue between your teeth.

“Fuck. Me. Now.”

“That’s all you had to say.” His words spark your half-hard cock, which you've been pressing against the curve of his arse, into fullness. You wrap both arms around him, careful of the wound, and line yourself up behind him. He bears backward as you push in as slowly as the flame in your belly will allow. You gasp into his hair as he cries out.

“Okay?”

“Yes. Oh, God. Very okay.”

As you begin a gentle rhythm, your movements kept subtle and incremental, you move a hand from its hold around him to skim over his throat, across his chest, down his stomach (gone slightly, sweetly soft from weeks of inactivity). “I missed you so much,” you breathe into the sweat on his back.

“But you were there,” he says, inhaling sharply, “every day, every second. You almost never left me, even when you should have.”

“I missed you like this.” He groans as you work your thigh between his legs, parting them to allow you closer, deeper. “I’ve hardly had you like this at all, but in a way, I feel like I’ve been missing it my whole life. Missing you. Being in you.” You shout with him as you brush his prostate on an upward angle; you move your hand to his hip to brace yourself as you thrust to meet it again once, twice, three times. “I could—oh, Christ, Sherlock—I could fuck you forever.”

“Please, please, please,” he says, and what he’s requesting, you’re not sure, but you gently pry his hand from his cock and replace it with your own, matching strokes to thrusts.

“What do you need?”

“Oh, that, that, and more. I won’t break, I swear.”

You pick up speed, endeavoring to remain careful, growling his name in response to each time he sighs yours. He begins to tense; you feel the vibration of pressure building in him, shaking against you from head to toe. With your free hand, you pull his hair back again and cover his mouth with yours, swallowing his wails as he comes in quaking pulses over your hand and onto the sheets below. You fuck him through it, your pace faltering only slightly as you release his lips, heaving. He trembles against you as you take his hips in your hands. You push the heat of him back over you a final time and bury your face in his hair as waves of unspeakable love break over you, and suddenly you’re somehow transferring not just fluid but the grief of these past three years and the conviction that in this moment, it has all been worth it.

You hold him for several minutes before you finally, at his soft suggestion, agree to the separation of your bodies and allow yourself to be drawn out of the bed and into the shower, where you remove his bandage and clean the wound with meticulous care.


	10. Chapter 10

When he’s awake, you almost stop choking on fear.

For the first time since you met him, you don’t worry that he’s trying to get something out of you when he grips you by the shoulders and turns you into the full light of his attention. There’s no hint of a long game. When he smiles like this—relaxed, steady, warm—your hands cease their constant testing of window locks, and you steal fewer glances toward the street below.

  
He takes your doctorly orders of sleep and nourishment more seriously than expected. You can’t help but grin through the tautness of your chest at the sight of him eating as much as he can of what you set in front of him, as if he were making up for years of self-neglect to make you happy. Your heart beats hard enough to bruise.

Even the sharpest edges of Moriarty’s omnipresent threat are tempered by the sheer, crushing goodness of waking up each morning in the cup of his embrace, graced by the sweet tells of his living state: warm hands on your stomach, scents of wood and sleep, lush murmurs in your ear.  
“We two boys together clinging, one the other never leaving,” he croons. The broad reverberation of his voice against your back causes walls in your chest to collapse and new chambers to open.

He reveals himself gradually. There are cups of coffee brought to you in bed—“not drugged,” he mutters with something that very nearly resembles sheepishness. Case notes and autopsy reports offered by Lestrade and Molly get highlighted, shared, and tangled in the sheets. In apparent pursuit of perfection that you assure him he’s long since achieved, he makes a morning ritual of generous, agonizingly slow blowjobs, punctuated sweetly by questions like “Is it better here? Or here?” as if he were the doctor and you the wild-eyed, panting patient. Autumn leaves redden outside his bedroom window in time with the aroused flush of his cheeks.  
When you ask how he could have hidden this part of himself from you for so long—this impossible romantic humming beneath stoic skin—he kisses your mouth and says simply, “I have a lot to make up for."

“You don’t,” you whisper, not to him but to yourself, caught in another role reversal as you hide your face in your hands at three a.m. while he sleeps in the room beside you. “You never did.”

 

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise when he suggests that you invite Mary to his parents’ for Christmas dinner. He hasn’t seen or spoken to her in months, yet when the subject arises—when you blink back tears and stare at the ceiling, your breaths coming quick and heavy, your hands spasming at your sides—he gathers you into a swaying dance of an embrace and says, “She’ll protect us if she can, John. You can trust her. In a way, she saved my life.”

You don’t quite see it that way—not at all, in fact—and you’re not sure what to make of his quickness to defend her. He hasn’t said much about the future, or even about Magnussen. Certainly not Moriarty. Whenever you clear your throat in an uncomfortable prelude to actual discussion, he smoothes his large hands over the nape of your neck, as if to impose an unspoken moratorium on talking about it.

“Why would you want her to come?”

“I just thought that maybe, with your daughter due soon. . .you’d want to make amends. Have her close by.” He rarely mentions the baby, but when he does, she is always “your daughter,” followed by an upward twitch of his lips and faraway look in his eyes. You want to take his face in your hands and say “our daughter,” but you’re not sure how to predict his reaction, and anyway, she isn’t all yours to offer.

“I’d really prefer to keep Mary far away, thanks.”

“John.” His tone forces your gaze upward. “I can’t. . . bear to see you like this. I know that you’re angry, and you have every right to be. You should be angry with me, too, that I ever brought this on you. It is my fault. All of it. But being the extraordinary, sentimental specimen that you are, you’ve forgiven me. I think it would be better if you could find a way to forgive her, too.”

“Why?”

He threads his fingers through yours and squeezes your hands. “Malice doesn’t suit you. It’s weighing on you and I can’t have that.”

“Don’t you think that maybe what’s weighing on me is the idea that an assassin or—or an undead madman is going to crawl in through the window and murder you? I’m living in mortal fear that you’re about to be taken from me for good.”

“I know.” He draws you in close, hands falling into place. “All I can tell you is that I’m working on it. It’s in hand. And Mary is a part of that. She told you herself: she’s working against Moriarty now, covertly, and she wants you around enough that she’ll employ her considerable skill in order to protect you. She wants you alive and available to your daughter. Forgive her.” He cards absent fingers through your hair. “We need her on our side.”

You know, despite the ocean of rage boiling in your gut, that you’ll do it. You’ll try. You gave up years ago on any notion of denying him something he’s asked for. And it would, admittedly, be a relief to imagine yourself in the hospital room when the baby is born, unburdened by suspicion and rage.

“What do you mean,” you say, “it’s in hand? I’d really like for you to tell me anything you know.”  
“I haven’t meant to leave you in the dark.” He looks behind you to his wall of markers and notes, where he has slowly begun to assemble hints of Moriarty’s return. “The truth is that no one knows anything. The initial message sent to Moriarty’s most loyal cohorts was coded and entirely anonymous. It could be an unfounded whisper, but the risk is too great to make that assumption. The full extent of Mycroft’s power is currently directed at finding out the truth.”  
“And yours?"

“I’m afraid I’m rather tied up at the moment.” He smiles down at you. “Not in much of a state for leg work. Lucky for me, I have rather a good doctor.”

“A live-in one, even.”

“Quite so. And I do think that I may currently need treatment.”

 

But Mary declines when you haltingly ask her to dinner on a scheduled visit to your former flat. The combined weight of Magnussen and Moriarty’s surveillance networks necessitates an upkeep of appearances: Mycroft has insisted that you continue to visit, as though in an attempt to repair the marriage, so that your recorded pressure point does not shift to Sherlock. You suspect that it already has—how could it not? Your love for him rises to the surface of your skin as conspicuously as if marked there by a mouth. Episodes of insomnia are increasingly colored by the fear that you’ll betray him with an unsuppressed grin or a hacked cell phone picture or a torn up, discarded attempt at poetry.

“Well, I suppose it is a bit awkward to ask,” you say to the floor by her swollen feet.

“It isn’t that. I’m. . .touched. Really. But I’ve got plans that night.”

“Oh.”

Her gaze falls.

You clear your throat. “Nothing to do with. . .”

“No. God, no,” she says. “Just a visit with an old friend. Nothing dangerous, I assure you.” She chances a grin, pressing both hands to her stomach.

“Good. I mean. I trust you, of course.”

Her incredulous laugh hangs stiffly in the air between you. “You do?”

“Not with my own life, mind you. Certainly not Sherlock’s. But with hers.” You gesture toward her stomach with your chin. “Think you’ve proven that you’ll go pretty far to protect her.”

“You bet your ass, I will.”

It’s your turn to grin. “Are you American? Sherlock and I were wondering. He’d never admit it, but he can’t figure it out, and it bothers him. But his best guess is American.”

Her eyes remain steady this time when they meet yours, and her mouth twists into a wry shape. “Like I’d ever tell you.”

It isn’t a formal scene of reconciliation, but you when you leave the flat, you realize that your hands have unclenched for the first time in months. Care of your unborn daughter is care of you, in a capacity. Better to not have to worry about her when you need everything you have to shield your (still recovering) detective.

 

In the long black car that arrives on Christmas Day, courtesy of Mycroft, Sherlock turns to you and says, “I need you to answer the following question with absolute honesty. The outcome of the next several hours depends on it.”

The corner of your mouth lifts without your consent. “Okay.”

“Do you still love Mary at all? Do you foresee any kind of future peace with her, wherein you might even be able to work with her? Not just as a parent, but an associate? A friend?” He pauses, purses his mouth in that way of his. “Knowing what you know, do you care for her?”  
The exhaustion of the past months suddenly collects in the muscles of your face and manifests as a tired, defeated grimace. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” You exhale. “We’ve. . .we’ve made a person together. I suppose there’s some emotions involved there that you can’t quite take back."  
“Would you go to any lengths to protect her?”

“In her current state, yes.”

“And the baby goes without saying, I imagine.”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

He reaches for your hand and settles it in his lap. “It’s important for what comes next.”  
“Comes next? I thought we were going to your parents’?”

“Mmhm.”

“Sherlock.”

“Trust me, John. I know I don’t deserve it, but please trust me.”

The quickness of your surrender strikes you as pathetic, but you’re too worn down to argue. “If whatever you’re planning brings us any closer to being rid of Moriarty, then I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“Hmm. Did you bring your gun like I suggested?”

You sigh.

“Is it in your coat?”

“Yes.”

 

You find yourself caught in an amber moment of domesticity, once you’ve been properly introduced to The Parents. Mummy fusses over you and slips you secret smiles like sweeties, while Father—tall and quiet and so good-natured, dressed in things you could easily see yourself wearing in thirty years (he’s the one you’ve got the most questions for, questions that you’re not the sort to ask and he’s not the type to answer)—nods at you serenely with an air of what you’d like to interpret as approval.

“Thank you,” he whispers in the sitting room, away from his brilliant wife and disgruntled children. “I know what you’ve done for him. I can see it. When I heard he’d relapsed again. . .I can’t tell you how scary it’s been, John, to wonder if my youngest will pull out of it this time.”  
You smile, unable to meet his eyes, which look so much like Sherlock’s have in recent moments of unguarded warmth.

“His big brain can’t handle it, you know. So much information. Easier to numb it out a bit, I think—that’s what the drugs have always been about. He feels so much. Not like his brother. I’m sure you’ve seen that well enough by now.”

“Yes, well. It took long enough to figure it out.”

“He’s good at putting people off, but he needs them. Especially now that he’s back. He’s a bit. . .softer now, don’t you think? Look after him. I know you will. Thank you.”

An unbidden wetness invades your downcast lashes; you sniff, blink, and nod. “I certainly intend to.”

He looks down at you with more love in his crooked grin—Sherlock’s, again, undeniably—than your own father has ever mustered, squeezes your shoulder, and says, “I know, John.”

 

You’re talking to Mycroft when the drug takes effect. His eyes widen, then narrow. To your shock, he manages a fully executed eyeroll before succumbing to the flatness of the laptop below him.

“What the hell have you done?”

Sherlock looks at his watch. “On schedule."

Your breathing has lost regularity. Billy Wiggins—that conniving little shit, you’ve never trusted him, never liked the way he looks at you or at Sherlock—rests a hand on your shoulder; you shove him off with enough violence to shoo him across the kitchen.

“In answer to your question, John,” Sherlock drawls, shrugging into his coat, “a deal is what I’ve done. A deal with the devil.”

You wonder if he’ll get it this time—if the sociopath veneer will recede for long enough for him to sense the resentment you’re loading into this one look. He gazes back at you steadily, and you hate that his eyes are self-assured pools that contain everything you’ve thought of and haven’t yet thought to think. “Do you want to save them? Mary and your daughter?”

Your hands twitch in the direction of his throat. “Of course. More than anything. I do.”

He steps closer, until your lips are a palm’s breadth apart. “Well, I want to save you. What needs must, John.”

He hands you your coat.

 

But who saves you?

It takes you a walk across a dusklit field, a stiff ride in a black-scaled, sleek helicopter, and a long look at the projected vision of him all but diving into a cone of flame to drag you out, your name in his lungs, expelled with a force you used to dream about, even before he died, if you’re honest, which you have to be, now: you used to dream that he would back your name with anything more piqued than a calm baritone, and here it is, the evidence. The priorities exposed by flame. It takes all of this to make you realize that he planned to kill Magnussen with your gun. That may not have been what he initially intended; the vaults, he may confess later, were supposed to have been literal, not locked into the grey matter that now collects in patterns on the imported marble floor. But he would have done it, for you, as a last resort. For you and your wife and your child.

Instead it’s the middle figure of that grouping who stands between your clenching fists and his limp fingers. Her hair is covered, again, by the black of her trade.

“It had to be done,” she says. Black cloth stretches translucent over her belly.

You have nothing to say.

“Run,” says Sherlock. “We’ll hold off Mycroft’s boys. I imagine you’ll have arranged transport—oh, no, it fell through, didn’t it?” Real concern creases his face. “What happened, Mary?”

“Janine. My old getaway.” She shrugs. “Found a better offer. But don’t worry. I’ll go willingly.”

“Let you get arrested? While eight months pregnant with my baby? Like hell.”

“Prison’s better than anything Jim’s got planned for me. It’s the safest place for us.”  
“Oh, no you don’t.”

“She’s right, John. Mycroft will protect her, if I ask. I’ll make sure that she receives the best possible care, and that you’ll be allowed visitation rights when the baby’s born.”

“And then what? My child gets raised in a prison?”

“No,” says Mary. The headshot was clean; she’s untouched by the gore at your feet. Her hands don’t shake around the gun she still holds. “No. . .I don’t know. I have a lot of information. Things that you—“ she dips her chin toward Sherlock—“missed on your little sojourn. I’d be willing to divulge in exchange for protection.”

“What kind of protection?”

“Witness protection.”

“So I’d never see her?”

“Wasn’t sure you wanted to.”

“Of course I want to. How can you say that?”

“You just asked me if she’d be raised in prison, John, as if staying with me is her only option.”

  
It’s true. It’s cold and pointed and true. You’ve never even considered a reality wherein you would take the baby. A cacophony of factors compete to flesh out the framework of that scenario, but none of them explains the dull sense of wrongness and subsequent guilt in your gut. Sherlock, you, and everything that you get up to together? Not much room for a baby.

  
“I couldn’t. . .couldn’t take her from you, not after everything you’ve sacrificed to protect her. Could I?”

“Maybe there’s another way.”

“There is.” Sherlock takes your hand, and, to her flinching shock, Mary’s. “I’ll make sure of it.”


	11. Chapter 11

When Mycroft arrives, he assumes that it’s finally happened: he has come under national obligation to arrest his younger brother.

That’s what Sherlock tells him, too.

“I had to,” he says. His palms, outstretched in surrender, are marred by carefully applied evidence: blood and gunpowder. “He would have destroyed us all.”

Mycroft shakes his head. You catch the quiver of his chin, the damp widening of his eyes. He pulls Sherlock into a corner, away from the gaze of snipers and the rest of the British government. “What could possibly be worth this?”

Sherlock looks at you and you almost ruin the ruse by allowing your knees to give in; by wrapping your arms around his legs and sobbing apology.

Mycroft’s nod is almost imperceptible.

“Dr. Watson. Mrs. Watson. A helicopter will land shortly to escort you back to your. . .to Mrs. Watson’s home. I’ll keep you informed of further proceedings.”

With that, he makes the formal arrest. Sherlock falls into a single file march in front of him. As he passes you, he mouths: Never forget my vow.

 

The helicopter lands in a football field near the house that you used to share with Mary. Wordlessly, you follow her down the street, up the steps and through the door. She removes and hangs her coat, and then, without hesitation, eases yours from your shoulders. You spend several long moments standing on the threshold of the sitting room while she boils water and pours it over teabags. She sets yours on the end table, as if acknowledging the motion as a formality rather than a kind gesture. As she settles on the settee, it takes her a full minute to arrange her limbs around her belly.

She wraps her hands around her cup and blows into the steam. “They won’t keep him in prison, you know.”

When you say nothing, she continues: “Even if his brother wasn’t who he is, Magnussen was a menace to multiple European governments. They’ll be grateful to the one who disposed of him, even if they can’t officially celebrate it. And I have information, things that might help keep him safe—“

“You murdered Magnussen! You’re the one who should be rotting in prison! How can you let him do this? After you almost killed him, too.”

“This is for our daughter. Not you. Not me. Please, John. Don’t get selfish now.”  
You’ve never cried in front of her before—indeed, before Sherlock handed you that list six months ago, you hadn’t cried in front of anyone in more years than you can remember—but your voice cracks now, and you know from long nights of PTSD that you’re about to dry heave. “This is the third”—heave—“time”—heave—“I’ve lost him.”

She stares at you, mouth small. “I know.”

Your shoulders are shaking now. Your hands move to cover your face.

Over the scrape of your unchecked sobs, you hear her rise from the couch, unsteady on her swollen feet. You flinch as she moves to stand behind you and then wraps her arms around your waist, lacing them above your navel. The round heat of her belly warms your spine.

“I’m truly sorry, John. Maybe you don’t care. That’s okay. Reasonable.”

She leans forward and pushes her nose between your shoulder blades. You can feel the chill of it through your jumper.

I never wanted this to happen. If I weren’t eight months pregnant, I never would have agreed to it. I don’t want to hurt him. I especially don’t want to hurt you. I’ve done some awful things—things no one should get away with—but so has he, and so have you.” She gently pulls on your wrist; you surrender, turn to face her, and allow her to place your hands on her stomach. As if summoned, your daughter meets you with a firm kick.

“Healthy.” Your voice is cracked beyond recognition; it frightens you. “She’s about ready, I’d say. Even if no one else is.”

Mary covers your hand with hers and forces you to meet her eyes. “Please, please just get this right with me. Help me get this right.”

Her tears might be genuine. Who knows.

You shake your head. “You’re wrong. He did do this for me. And you.”

“And her.”

“I can’t be without him.”

“Then we’ll get him back.”

 

Baker Street feels just like it did after he fell: full and empty, crowded and stark.

Mary offers you the couch. You accept.

 

At night, drunk, you replay the moments before his arrest over and over. Could you have stopped it? He excused himself, and you trusted him. God, why do you always blindly trust him? You assumed that he was going to hunt for some key evidence in Appledore that might convince Mary’s would be captors to grant her some kind of reprieve. When he’d come back, his hands and forearms had been splattered by blood (from a superficial wound between his fingers, you saw it, you have every cubic inch of that skin mapped to memory). Mycroft had arrived before you could beg him not to play martyr.

You wonder if they tested the blood. That could be a loophole. But why would they? He went willingly. He confessed. No one was surprised.

 

“How could you leave me how could you leave me you are always leaving me I will never have you I thought I had you but just like before you’ve fucking evaporated you’re gone you’re not home you’re not in my bed your experiments aren’t everywhere there’s no poetry it’s all a fucking grave just like before. You left me with her. You never stay. You never stay.”  
You have both hands pressed to the glass. He’s crying openly, prison phone held against his heart, palm dwarfing yours as he tries to touch you through the barrier. It’s easier now than ever to see the frightened child behind his eyes. He raises the receiver to his trembling mouth.

“John, please.”

“What’s the plan? Hmm? How’re you going to fix it this time? I keep waiting, Sherlock, for someone to start laughing; for someone to tell me how stupid I’ve been for not seeing through another one of your tricks. For Moriarty to pop out of a cake and everyone to applaud another joke successfully played on me.”

“No. Not this time.”

“That’s what you always say.”

He sniffles and brings his hand to his nose. You wish you didn’t know how easy it is for him to cry on command.

“There’s been talk. . .there’s a mission. I may be sent undercover.”

“What kind of mission?”

He allows himself a languorous exhale.

“The kind an agent is not typically expected to return from.”

“Oh, Jesus. Fucking hell, Sherlock.”

“I’m being honest with you. Isn’t that what you want? I wish that you could just see, for a moment, that I am trying to do right by you. That I have been.”

“And I wish you could just see that I am insane—that I am a bad person. That I am too far in with you to ever come back. I don’t care about anything or anyone else.”

“The baby.”

“The baby, the baby, the baby. Who’s to say she’s even mine? Everything else Mary’s lied about.”

“You don’t mean that. She is yours. I could give you a bulleted list of what makes me absolutely certain, but you don’t need that. I know you feel it.”

“Don’t you dare tell me how I feel.”

He shakes his head.“She deserves you. I never will.”

 

He’s granted a stay of execution as higher ups decide what ought to be done with him. You busy yourself with vigorous prenatal care. Under your guidance, Mary swallows homemade bone broths and herbal teas. You join her in her breathing exercises, which leads to a moment of shared laughter at the absurdity of your hands on your stomach, mirroring hers. You help her to keep her feet elevated, and make yourself available for frequent ice cream and crisp runs.  
“I wish you’d started this a bit earlier on, but I guess late’s better than never.”

“I’m here now.”

“Yes.” She spoons a bit of broth into her mouth. “What next, Doctor?”

“We wait.”

 

A suicide mission that meets the appropriate criteria—whatever they are—is selected. Mary accompanies you to the tarmac, though you tell her it’s not necessary, unless she’s planning to turn herself in.. She glares at you. You let it go. Your word against both of theirs will get you nowhere. If this is how it ends for you—and it will be the end of what remains of you, once you receive notice of his eventual death, which you’ve been assured is an inevitable feature of the mission—then so be it.

Alone on the concrete, you stare at him. He stares back.

“You can be rewritten,” he says, but your pages have been burnt to ash and he’d better fucking know it.

He doesn’t kiss you on the mouth, but between the eyes.

You allow him to hold your shaking wrists and you do not cry.

“To the very best of times, John.”

 

Then the plane lifts and you hear the crack of earth and concrete as England starts to pitch into the sea.

It turns around mid-air, and you fall to your knees.

When he emerges, back from the dead for a third time, he pulls you up by both hands and says, “I’m needed right away, if we’re to catch the hackers and get a potential lead on Moriarty. I’ll come to you as soon as I can.”

 

Whenever you attended a birth in medical school, you entertained a brief musing that it’s not like it is in the movies. Real life births are calmer and slower. Mothers can often talk and walk around. Screaming and hand-gripping is typically reserved for a few key moments at the end.  
In the spirit of this observation, Mary gently wakes you at 5 a.m. on February 2nd from a fitful sleep. “Contractions are five minutes apart,” she says. “Come on.”

You rub the sleep from swollen eyes and step into some shoes. When you reach for the car keys, she shakes her head.

“No. Here.”

“What?”

“It has to be here, John. You’ll deliver her. Don’t worry—“ She pauses to exhale a practiced staccato breath through pursed lips—“I put everything you’ll need in a box under the bed.”  
“What? I haven’t delivered a baby in almost ten years! And even then, never on my own!”  
“It’s too dangerous to go to the hospital. I’ll have no way of monitoring who comes in or out, and even if I did, I’ll hardly be able to do anything about it. No, it has to be done here. Don’t worry. In another life, I was a midwife for a while. And you’ll have help.”

“Help?”

Headlights pass behind the lace of the sitting room curtains. The room remains swaddled in pre-dawn hush and Mary’s controlled breathing, but you swear that the slam of your heartbeat can be heard down the street. Fear tastes like metal in your mouth, behind your lungs. A key clicks into the lock.

“Didn’t start without me, did you?”

Sherlock looks worn and beautiful as a love letter. He’s followed by a young woman who you recognize from your long weeks sitting vigil at the hospital—an obstetrics nurse who warmed you with tea and conversation on a few occasions.

“Yanah can be trusted,” says Sherlock. “Long time contact in the Network. Done quite well for herself, these past few years.”

“Only with your help,” she says.

She grins at him like she knows him well, though you've never seen them together before. He nods to her, and she moves into the room with the air of someone accustomed to emergency. She smiles at Mary and guides her into the bedroom, a gentle hand pressed to her lower back.  
You’re frozen in place, hands balled by your sides.

“What’s going on?”

He crosses the room and crushes you to him. Your eyelashes brush his clavicle. Slowly, as if thawing, your fists unfurl and reach around to press him even closer. Smoke and woods fill your lungs.

“No leads yet. The trail’s cold,” he says, words muffled by your hair. “Mycroft and I agreed it would be safest if we were all together. He’s had people watching this house for the past month.”

“Are you—free?”

“More or less. Something about royal pardons or extremely rare exceptions. Wasn’t entirely listening.”

“Ah. Well. I’m. . .I’m glad you’re here.”

Before more can be said, Mary calls from the bedroom: “Hate to break up the reunion, but if you assholes don’t get in here soon, you have no say on the name!”

 

Over the course of the next five hours, you relearn your imminent respect for both the human body and the woman you know as Mary Watson. Laid out on the bed like a queen, she is the picture of control: the only betrayal of her pain is harsh, measured breath through gritted teeth and the occasional low, guttural sound. You begin at the traditional fatherly station by her side, allowing her to clutch your hand in revenge for impregnating her. Shortly, though, she throws you off and rises, leaning on Yanah as she walks around the room. Sherlock stands still in the corner, unsure (you have seen him this way before, when that soldier was stabbed at the palace) of where to put his hands. To your surprise, Mary is the one who shows him. She leads him to the bed, where she lies back down, balanced between his weight and yours. She keeps both of your hands in hers as Yanah says in an even tone, “She’s crowning. Push now, Mary!”  
You crane your neck over her knees to see, yes, the crown of your daughter’s head, growing bigger by the second.

“Come on, come on! Give me a big one!”

Mary does, her resolve slipping as she expels a loud, triumphant shout. Her voice mingles with a new one, as the four of you hear your daughter’s cry for the first time.

Yanah laughs, Mary yells, and Sherlock has tears in his eyes. He catches you gazing at him and smiles, breathless, before looking back to see tiny purple shoulders emerge from Mary, followed by a navel the size of a fingernail, long legs, and, finally, ten minute toes.

Mary releases you, and you hurry to assist Yanah, clearing the baby’s nose and mouth of mucus as she readies a shot of Vitamin K. You can’t be sure of her weight yet, but she feels solid in your arms. Her little limbs look sturdy and well formed, and her voice sounds more and more human as she grows accustomed to using it. Your eyes sting as you looked down at her tiny ones, squeezed shut.

“Cut the cord?”

Yanah hands you the instrument, and you do. Mary’s hands are outstretched as you place the baby on her chest.

For several hushed moments, no one speaks, crowded around Mary. Slowly, Yanah begins to remove the cloths and basin placed beneath her, leaving you and Sherlock to stand in awe.  
“Touch her,” says Mary. “This is when the oxytocin runs the highest. I want you both to make that bond.”

She means Sherlock, since you’ve already held her, though every part of you wants to again and again; to hold her and never let her go.

“Me?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say.

He looks shy and uncertain. You look to Mary, who nods, and you slowly pick up the baby and place her in his waiting arms.

“Hold her head like—yeah, you’ve got it. You’re a natural.”

He smiles, but his eyes are locked on the child. He ghosts one long hand over her sticky hair, softly traces the perfect seashell of an ear. “Angel,” he says, and then begins to hum a melody you’ve heard him play often in the past few months.

“What is that?” you ask.

“Oh. French folk song. My grandmere used to sing it. . .doesn’t matter.”

“Grandmere?”

“Yes. Maria. Best woman I ever knew.”

“Let’s call her that,” says Mary, stretching her strained neck. “Seems fitting, don’t you think? In honor of this persona. It’s by far my best.”

“Maria,” Sherlock hums.

“Perfect,” you say.  
He kisses the place between the baby’s eyes and says, “Well, Mary. I do believe la petite Maria is hungry.”

 

You never expected domestic bliss in any form, really. When you got married, it seemed like the thing to do. Ella was in favor. It got you to mope a bit less. Never, in your fondest, most idealistic fantasies, did you expect the shimmering power of waking in your bed, your not so estranged wife asleep at your side while your best friend and lover hums softly to your child, asleep in his arms. You could not have anticipated the benediction of these shared little breaths.  
Sherlock lays Maria on your chest and crawls into the bed next to you. He fits just so under the heft of your arm.

 

“Thank God you’re both here,” Mary says over the kitchen table, Maria pressed to her breast. “I’d never get any sleep at all. I don’t know how people do it.”

“Neither do I,” you say.

You smile and fit your index finger into Maria’s free hand; she squeezes, indenting your skin with the tiny half moons of her fingernails.

Sherlock sets tea in front of you, then Mary.

“Nettle, like you said, Doctor.” He wrinkles his nose. “Smells odd.”

“It’ll help combat anemia from the blood loss. Let’s let me keep seeing to the living bodies, shall we?”

He pushes out his lower lip, but his eyes sparkle.

You clear your throat. “Any news?”

Mary turns her sharp eyes toward him. He shakes his head.

“No. Still no telltale stirrings of Moriarty’s network, or anyone who might be involved. Present company excluded, of course.”

“What about Janine?”

Mary looks down, shifts to give Maria better access.

“She left the country the night Magnussen died. That’s all I know.” Her voice changes pitch as she lifts Maria to her shoulder and pats her little back. “I think it’s nap time, don’t you? Yes, we’re long overdue for a nap.”

 

  
Very early on Maria’s seventh morning, you wake to a low, sweet murmur of their voices in the kitchen.

As quietly as you know how, you creep to the threshold of the room.

“You will, won’t you.”

Sherlock responds in a dark, sincere register. “Always.”

Mary sighs. “We know you’re there, John.”

You walk into the room, chastened by your misguided notions of sneaking up on an assassin and the world’s only consulting detective.

You look at Sherlock, who has Maria tucked against his shoulder, asleep. “What will you do?”  
Mary rises, still stiff from labor, and kisses your cheek. “What he’s meant to. Don’t worry about it.”

 

  
The next day, she’s gone. The A.G.R.A. flashdrive sits on the table, along with a cryptic address and a note: Send pictures here. You may never hear from me again, but please, no matter what: keep sending them.

And then, as if an afterthought: Moriarty threat neutralized. The hacked broadcast was a false alarm. You are all safe. I will make sure of it.

You’re too exhausted to muster a panic, which would wake the baby in your arms.

“Where did she go?”

Sherlock shrugs.

"I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me anything. But my brother called and said that, due to new evidence from an anonymous source, I’ve been exonerated and freed of all charges related to Magnussen’s murder. The same source apparently claimed that Moriarty was no longer a concern of the British government, nor a threat to its citizens.”

“Shit.” You exhale, rocking Maria as she stirs in her sleep. “It’s over, then?”

“I don’t know. It would seem so. She clearly has more information than I, Mycroft or the entirety of MI6 has been able to glean.”

“I can’t believe she’d leave. After everything she did to keep the baby.”

“I think she intended to leave a legacy.” He smiles softly. “And she did. In the hands of the person she trusts the most. Which isn’t saying much, of course, but there you have it.”  
You hug your daughter closer to your chest and lean into him. He wraps his arm around your waist and rests his head against yours.

“If you want me to attempt to find her, I will.”

You shrug, which brings him even closer, warm along your shoulders and the small of your back.

“I imagine she’ll come back if and when she can. I guess I’m willing to do as she asks this time.”  
He nods. “Shall we go home?”

“Please.”

 

It should feel strange, but it doesn’t. A Moses basket, a pram, and other telltale signs seem to fit into Baker Street as easily as beakers and (now very well secured, locked up) guns. Sherlock takes initiative in baby-proofing the various hazards of the kitchen, which is such a pleasant surprise that you neglect to remind him that Maria won’t be in danger until she’s able to crawl.  
On a Sunday afternoon, two weeks after Mary’s disappearance, you listen to the charcoal hum of him, reciting Shel Silverstein from memory to the loose-limbed baby in his arms:

_“Once there was a tree...._

_and she loved a little boy._

_And everyday the boy would come_

_and he would gather her leaves_

_and make them into crowns_

_and play king of the forest.”_

When he’s finished, she’s asleep—she sleeps a lot and cries very little, for a newborn. You treasure the moments that she’s awake and aware, the neutral slate color of her eyes as they look up into his--you take her from him and set her down carefully in her basket.

“Sherlock,” you murmur. “Are you sure you aren’t. . .I don’t know. . .a bit bored? It’s been ages since you’ve had a proper case. I wouldn’t mind, you know. If Lestrade has something, and you wanted to go out to crime scenes. I could make it work here, with her, so that we aren’t in your way.”

His expression is tranquil, warm, almost far away. If you were describing anyone else, you’d call it dreamy. “A case? Now?”

“Well, I just. . .if you wanted. You’re more than healed enough.”

“But. . .without you?”

“Well, I would love to go, but. . .you know. I can’t just up and leave at all hours anymore. You know it’s going to be like that from now on, right? I mean, of course you do. I guess, all I mean is that. . .I know this didn’t all go exactly like we planned. If you want to. . .reconsider things, like living arrangements, or even. . .us. . .I want you to know that I understand. We’ll make it work, whatever you want. And you’ll always have me, in whatever way you want, no matter what.”  
The dreaminess sharpens into concern as his brows draw together. “Is that really what you think? That I’d want you to leave?”

“I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to be stuck being a parent to my child, if you don’t want. I don’t feel I can ask that of you. Not with the cases—not at all.”

He shakes his head slowly. “But I love you.” (Warmth beats in your stomach, tied into a knot.) “I love Maria.” (The knot unwravels, spools around your organs, lights them up.) “I don’t need cases, John. I need you. It’s always been you. I needed you before I met you, and for a long time after, before I admitted it to myself. Don’t you understand? The cases were always to fill up the place where you belong. Where you are, now.”

The warmth has spread, rampant, and you are molten. You sniffle a bit. “But there will still be cases?”

He wraps his big hands around your shoulders to draw you in close. “Of course. But we’ll wait for the right one. The one we can’t refuse. And when it comes, Mrs. Hudson has mentioned something about babysitting. As have my parents.” He tilts his head, considering. “Even Mycroft, but I’ll have to be dead before he gets his claws into any child of mine.”

You laugh and squeeze him back. “Child of ours.”

“Ours.” He begins to hum the French folk song, and you remember all the steps of the dance he taught you that night, not so long ago, as he guides you across the sitting room floor of 221B.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I am on [tumblr](http://quietasasleepingarmy.tumblr.com%22). :)


End file.
